


Terminus

by Mengde



Series: Sith Apprentice: Darth Venge [15]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Polyamory, Sith Obi-Wan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-09-23 06:08:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9643802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mengde/pseuds/Mengde
Summary: Justicar Venge is no more - or, at the very least, he has gone missing.  Padmé leads a crack team of the Order's finest to search for him, to bring him back, but in the meantime, the new threat known as Darth Terminus begins his bloody work.  If Padmé cannot find him quickly, the entire galaxy will suffer.And it will be Venge's fault.





	1. The Coruscant Incident

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Re-Entry Official Timeline](https://archiveofourown.org/works/913029) by [flamethrower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/pseuds/flamethrower). 



> Welcome to the latest entry in the Sith Apprentice series! As always, credit for originally creating the character of Venge goes to flamethrower and her work, Re-Entry. With that said, let's pick up where we left off!

Darth Sidious, his guise of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine fully in place, strode through the plush halls of the Senate building.  Flanking him were Mas Amedda and Bail Organa, both trying to talk over the other without either enjoying much success.

“Gentlemen,” Sidious finally said, holding up a hand.  “I recognize that you both have news of great import, but I will absorb nothing if you insist on speaking at the same time.  Vice Chancellor, let the good Senator say his piece.”

With a scowl, Amedda relented and let Organa speak.  “Supreme Chancellor,” Organa began.  “Alderaan will withdraw from the Republic before it submits to a draft.”

_Of course it will,_ Sidious thought.  “But why?” he asked out loud.  “Can it be that the citizens of Alderaan are not ready to lay down their lives protecting our grand Republic?”

“The founding charter of our planetary government specifies that ‘no being shall be compelled to serve in war between nations, individuals, or other powers, either as a soldier, or an officer, or an enlisted noncombatant.’  It is a fundamental right of Alderaanian citizens.”  As they came to a halt outside Sidious’s office, Organa interposed himself between the Sith Lord and the door – a flagrant breach of protocol, but the big man was clearly past caring.  “We will not sacrifice our principles for security.”

Sidious turned to Mas Amedda.  “I take it that you had something to say which bears upon the Senator’s concerns?”

“Indeed,” Amedda said.  “I was _going_ to say that under your latest emergency powers expansion, you have the authority to sign an executive order banning the cessation of worlds from the Republic.  A fact I thought the good Senator ought to be made aware of.”  He shot Organa a nasty smile.

Organa bristled.  “That would be a blatant overreach –”

“Enough,” Sidious said.  “Senator Organa, despite the debate we just enjoyed in the Senate, a draft is not even a remote possibility.  Such a measure would erode popular support of the administration during a time when it is vitally important that we remain united.”  He turned to Amedda.  “And I will not sign any such executive order, Vice Chancellor.  Your using _my_ emergency powers as a tool of intimidation is most unappreciated.”  _The sniveling toady would do anything for my favor, but he too easily forgets his place.  Palpatine may be manipulated, but never_ used.

Amedda blanched, but ducked his head in a contrite bow.  “Understood, Supreme Chancellor.”

For his part, Organa stepped aside.  “Thank you, Supreme Chancellor.  I should have had more faith that you’d understand.”

“Think nothing of it, Senator,” Sidious said, carefully modulating his tone to just the right level of cheer and blandness.  He reached for the door controls.  “Rest assured that the Republic –”

And, impelled by the Dark Side, he ducked.

The door slid open to reveal a dark-clad figure, face concealed by a blackened metal mask.  It was already in the process of swinging its lightsaber in a lethal arc toward where Sidious’s neck had been a split second earlier.

Sidious escaped decapitation.  Amedda, who had been his usual, obsequious one step behind, did not.

He could hear Organa’s shout of alarm, the man’s stumbling footfalls as he backpedaled from this sudden threat.  But right now, Sidious could not afford to think about the Alderaanian.  If he did not act, and quickly, he would die.

So he summoned the Force, and sprang into the assassin like a pouncing nexu.

The attack got him out of the doorway, allowing him to close and lock the door with the Force.  Organa would be going for help, but Sidious needed to buy some time and privacy to deal with this.

He gasped as his opponent planted a foot in his gut, throwing him off and sending him into a flip.  Back-first, he slammed onto his desk, scattering bits of flimsi and crushing datapads.  Part of him noted, in a detached way, that the broad landscape window of his office had already been utterly destroyed.  Clearly, that was how the assassin had gained entry.

Sidious barely had time to roll away.  The assassin’s follow-up strike, blinding in its speed, split the desk neatly in two.  Regaining his feet, Sidious delivered a Force blow which slapped the assassin across the head, staggering him.  The move bought Sidious time to analyze his would-be executioner, and it came to him why this was so familiar.

“Venge,” he said, remembering the broadcast of Dooku’s death from mere days ago.  “Come to kill your Master, have you?”

The masked man turned, nothing but black, empty sockets visible beneath the metal of his false face.  _“I am not Venge,”_ he said, and his voice gave even Sidious chills.  _“I am Terminus.  Your end.”_

He attacked again, sliding forward in a Makashi thrust.  Sidious sidestepped, the silver blade passing harmlessly by, then seized Terminus’s phrik arm by the wrist to prevent a follow-up side-slash.  Terminus was physically stronger, but the Dark Side flowed trough Sidious, giving him a grip of duranium.

“You are no one’s end,” Sidious sneered.  “You are a ghost who never died, a spectre without substance.  Plagueis spun you into existence a decade ago, during a lengthy conversation with Venge.”

_“Where I come from does not change what I am,”_ Terminus said.  _“And I am your end.”_

Sith lightning blazed from his flesh-and-blood hand.  Sidious warded it off with a gesture, but Terminus used the momentary distraction to headbutt Sidious, smashing his masked face into the older man’s.  The move broke Sidious’s nose and slackened his grip enough for Terminus to tear his weapon hand free.  Then he resumed his assault with his saber, unleashing a blazing-fast Makashi attack sequence.

Sidious fell back, ducking and weaving to stay ahead of Terminus’s blade.  The Sith Lord was good – better than Dooku, even.

But Darth Sidious had not gotten to this place by only being as strong as Dooku.

He leapt into a lateral somersault over a broad horizontal sweep, and as he came back down he planted a Force-empowered elbow strike on Terminus’s right shoulder.  The man’s arm dislocated with a satisfyingly loud pop, and he staggered away, transferring his saber to his left hand.  He attacked again, displaying that he possessed all of Venge’s ambidexterity, but Sidious could tell his edge was blunted by the pain.

Now Sidious ducked beneath a cut to his throat, seized Terminus’s wrist with his left hand, and fired a vicious uppercut into the other man’s axilla while yanking the arm forward.  The joint was not dislocated, but Terminus’s arm went limp nonetheless as the force went straight to his nerve cluster.

“I expected a better showing than this,” Sidious taunted him, shoving him backward.  “Why come here if this is all you have, Terminus?”

_“Not all endings are those of the grave,”_ Terminus replied.  _“All I need to kill here is time.”_

Sidious snarled.  He _did_ need to finish this quickly, before Organa could return with guards.  It would not do for a prominent Senator and members of his security detail to see him unleashing the full power of the Dark Side.

So he seized a bronzium statue of Yanjon with the Force and hurled it.  Terminus had to take a step back so that when he cleaved the mass of metal in twain, it flew to either side rather than crushing him.  The move left him open to the storm of Sith lightning Sidious hurled after the statue, following directly behind it.  The violet bolts struck Terminus in the torso, lifting him off his feet.  As Terminus flew through the air, Sidious delivered a massive Force broadside which smote him sideways through the destroyed window behind the desk.

Sidious watched him plummet into the depths of the Coruscant night.

_He’s not dead,_ Sidious thought as Terminus vanished into the black.  _And what’s more, he knew that even with his new power he’s no match for me.  But could his gambit have simply been to kill me with the first strike?  Or to expose me to Organa?  Both are too simple.  What could he have –_

A whisper from the Dark Side compelled him to look up.  Across the vast gap between his window and the next cloudscraper over, he could see it: a holocam droid, hovering in the distance, its lens pointed squarely at his office.

He acted at the speed of thought.  He lashed a tendril of the Dark around the droid, pulling it across hundreds of meters in mere seconds.  Once it was in his office, he tore it apart, desperately hoping that he would not find what he suspected was within.

There, inside the casing: a miniaturized subspace antenna.  This was why the window had been destroyed – it was proofed against holocams, and Terminus had needed it out of the way to accomplish his real goal.

The entire fight had been captured by the holocam, and it had broadcast the footage somewhere.

A moment later, Sidious looked up in horror as the side of a nearby building – one giant holoscreen, currently displaying a bolo-ball match – had its feed overridden.  The new image was of low quality, obviously zoomed in from a great distance, but there was no mistaking the familiar scene which now played out before his eyes.

He watched himself move with the speed of the Dark Side, viciously beating Terminus before blasting him with Sith lightning and hurling him out a window.

_He purposefully let himself be injured.  For the holocam._

In mere seconds, Sidious knew, his security team would be through the door.  Organa would be with them.  Questions would be asked, demands made.  His position as Supreme Chancellor would come under attack.  It would take all his skill, his cunning, his charisma, his power in the Dark Side, to survive his exposure as a Sith Lord and retain control of the Republic.

But for the moment, he allowed a bitter smile to contort his features.  _Well played, Master,_ he thought, not caring if the sentiment would actually reach Plagueis or not through the Force.

_Well played._


	2. Dust and Echoes

Ordo moved carefully through the hulk of the _Usury._

The ship had been massively depressurized when the Hapan Nova battle cruisers cracked its hull like an egg.  The hypermatter reactor was still partially functional, but it was leaking coolant, causing a slow but inevitable buildup toward meltdown.  In a year, perhaps a year and a half, the _Usury_ would die a final, fiery death.  It would be towed out of orbit and scrapped long before then, but for now, it drifted, cold and mostly dead. 

Its corridors were lit erratically by the few illuminators that had survived, emergency and otherwise.  They cast bizarre interplays of white and red light, deepening the shadows.

“Quaternary adjunct corridor is unblocked so far,” Ordo said into the helmet mic of his pressure suit.  “Proceeding to the computer core.”

“Should Aayla and I give up on meeting you there?” Siri asked.  “We’ve cut through twelve meters of rubble in the secondary corridor and there’s still no end in sight.”

Calling up the schematic of the _Usury_ in his laser-perfect memory to determine the maximum potential blockage yet to be excised, Ordo calculated the time it would take the two Jedi to cut through another twenty meters of debris.  Then he did another calculation for the extra time it would take him to perform the manual decoupling procedure and carry the core back himself.

The numbers didn’t lie.  “Proceed back to the Ambassador’s ship,” he instructed them.  “I can go on alone.”

Their craft had only stored three vacuum-proofed pressure suits, else more of them would be here on the salvage op.  Ordo’s and Rex’s armor suits were good against vacuum for up to an hour, but the wearer could not expect to retain full functionality for more than twenty-five minutes.

“You sure about this, son?” Skirata broke in.  “You could hold there while Siri and Aayla come around to your access point.”

“The timing works out fastest this way, _Kal’buir,_ ” Ordo explained.  “And missing-persons operations are all about timing.”

“Agreed,” Rex spoke up.  “He’ll be fine, Sergeant.  Big, strong Null boy like that should have no problem with a computer core.”

Ordo bristled instinctively, but bit his tongue.  He knew that his pod of Nulls had a colorful reputation among the ranks of the less _altered_ clones.  He’d heard the scuttlebutt about him and his brothers.  _Crazy.  Violent.  Unpredictable._   Rex might be a Captain like Ordo, but that didn’t make him magically immune to preconceptions.

“All right,” Skirata said, the reluctance in his voice obvious.  “Just be careful.”

“I always am.”  Ordo moved farther down the corridor, DC-17 raised and ready.  If there were any droids left, he could slot up to three of them in the first second of engagement with blaster bolts alone.  If he’d not decided against firing anti-armor rounds within the ship, that number would increase sharply.

Fortunately, he made it to the ship’s computer core without incident.  As he began the process of extracting the core, he ran through a quick mental checklist of the steps they would need to take once he got it back to the Ambassador’s ship.  They had an R2-series astromech aboard that could do the core-to-ship interfacing, which simplified the list quite a bit.

The core wasn’t heavy, thanks to the ship being in microgravity, but it _was_ almost as big as Ordo himself.  He attached a pair of pneumatic-seal handgrips and began awkwardly walking it back out through the corridor.

Something dropped from the ceiling onto his face.

He stumbled, releasing the core and trying to disentangle himself from his attacker.  His vac-gloved fingers encountered something metallic, then something else with the consistency of frozen meat.  Even as he sought a firm grip on the thing, he could feel metal fingers skittering across the side of his helmet, looking for the pressure seal release.

Training took over.  He whirled, slammed his upper body into the nearest wall.  The fingers lost their purchase.  He did it again, then balled his hands into fists and began punching the thing clinging to him.

It came free of his head a moment later.  Ordo leapt back, skidding his heels along the deckplates to brake.  He pulled his DC-17 from his hip as he moved.

Flailing angrily in midair, with no way to propel itself as it sank slowly to the deck, was the top half of a Separatist Myrmidon.  It had been severed cleanly in half at the waist – a lightsaber cut, Ordo was sure of it.  For a moment he wondered how in the hell it could have survived, but the answer was clear: it hadn’t.  The flesh of the chest were a waxy grey, the eyes beneath the mask were blank and crusted over with ice particles.  Only the metallic limbs and the creature’s cybernetic spine were moving.

_This is intel,_ Ordo thought.  The Myrmidons clearly had been wired such that their autonomic control systems could take command of their mechanical components after brain death.  Right now, this one was executing an attack subroutine.

“Ordo, is everything all right?” Aayla asked.  “I sensed something.  Surprise, alarm?”

“Both,” Ordo replied.  “A Myrmidon corpse tried to jump me.”

Silence.  Then Skirata murmured, “I didn’t know they could do that.”

“No one knew that until just now.”  Ordo cautiously moved back toward the flailing thing, muscles relaxed, ready to move.  “I’m going to bring it in.  We might be able to extract some information from it.”

More silence.  “I’m guessing you’re going to kill it properly first?” Siri asked.

Ordo snorted.  “I was thinking about it, yes.”

The Myrmidon tried to grab him as he moved in, but he kicked its limbs aside, flipped it onto its stomach, and fired a point-blank blaster shot into the base of its neck.  The bolt penetrated the flesh of the torso and punctured the spine.  The creature instantly went limp, whatever signals were firing from the cybernetic circuitry in its brain unable to reach the rest of its body.

He allowed himself a single grunt of satisfaction.  Retrieving a length of smartcord from the pressure suit’s utility belt, he roped the cord around the Myrmidon’s neck, tied it off, and then secured the other end to his waist.

Picking up the computer core, he began the trek back to the Ambassador’s ship, his prize dragging along the deck behind him.

* * *

Padmé watched the monitor carefully as R2-D2, hooked into both the _Usury_ ’s computer core and her own ship, played back the security footage tracking Venge’s movements.  She watched him leave the bridge, rush through hallway after hallway, and stop in front of a small door.  He keyed in something – she couldn’t see what – and slipped inside.

R2 whistled mournfully, reporting that there was no footage of what was inside that room.

“But he doesn’t appear on any other security footage after that?” Padmé asked.

The little droid tweeted an affirmative.

“So he must have left the ship at that point,” she murmured.  “We need to see what’s inside that room.  Can you overlay his route on a schematic of the ship?”

The droid hooted triumphantly, and a moment later Padmé had the requested image in front of her.  According to R2’s map, Venge turned down a corridor and passed straight through a dead end into space.

“But there’s clearly a door there,” she said.  “Why isn’t it listed on the schematic?”

R2 gave a series of beeps and boops, a translation flashing up on the monitor.  The little droid apparently had no idea.  It suggested that this might be an addition, made after the ship’s initial construction without the knowledge of its designers.

“If it’s supposed to be secret, why point a security camera at it?” Padmé asked.

R2’s next suggestion was that it was the fault of the Colicoid firm which had been subcontracted to install the security cameras.  It observed that building ships by committee resulted in these sorts of problems more often than not.

“Or,” someone said from behind her, “it was placed there deliberately.”

Padmé started and turned to see Kal Skirata leaning in the doorway of her ship’s communications center, the only room with display screens large enough to accommodate both R2 and the computer core.  “You think it was put there so _we_ would see Venge go through that door?” she asked.

Skirata shrugged.  “Maybe.  We’re dealing with a real crafty _shabuir_ here, _Pad’ika._   Plagueis was already planning to have that ship go down over Corulag – who’s to say he wasn’t planning to let Venge kill Dooku for the extra bad publicity?  The camera on the bridge certainly gave us a nice view of him brutalizing the old _di’kut._ ”

A shudder crawled up Padmé’s spine at the memory of that vid.  “So you’re saying the room is a trap?”

“I’m saying let the Jedi go in first,” Skirata said with a fierce grin.  “If it _is_ a trap, they’re less likely to die.”

“We heard that!” Siri’s voice echoed from somewhere else inside the ship.

Padmé switched off the display screen.  “How’s our other project going?”

“You want to see?” Skirata asked.  “Real gruesome.  _Kandosii._ ”

Bracing herself, Padmé nodded and let him lead her into the ship’s medbay.

The Myrmidon was face-down on a bio bed.  Ordo had expertly peeled its scalp away and used a laser scalpel to remove the dome of its skull.  A forest of needles sprouted from its exposed brain, each of the needles connected to a medical computer by a hair-thin lead.

The Null was seated in front of the medical computer, hunched over the input pad.  He was tapping away at it, an expression of intense concentration on his face.  Rex stood nearby, looking like he wanted to help while simultaneously recognizing there was nothing he could do.

“Well, that’s disgusting,” Padmé said matter-of-factly.

“The cybernetic components of its brain are hard-wired deep into the tissue,” Ordo said, not looking up from the computer.  “In order to access them, I need to go through the tissue itself.  It’s pretty well-preserved – dead, but effectively flash-frozen by the decompression of that part of the ship.”

“Can you make it smile, son?” Skirata asked.

Rex chuckled.  “Make it say it doesn’t like sand.”

Padmé gave him a reproving look.  For her part, she was glad the thing was face-down.  She remembered seeing Anakin’s features on the first Myrmidon they’d ever encountered.  It was not a pleasant recollection.  “When did Anakin tell you about his… _issue_ with it?” she asked.

“Fleet made a stop at some junkyard desert planet by the name of Jakku about three months ago,” Rex replied.  “Looking for salvage for some project of Thrawn’s.  I asked Vice-Admiral Skywalker if he wanted to come down for a recce with the men, stay in fighting trim.  He declined – _strongly_.”

“How long you think it’ll be before we have something useful from it?” Skirata asked Ordo.

Ordo shrugged.  “Could be half an hour.  Could be never.  I’ve got a lot of junk data to sift through.  I suggest in the meantime, you have Siri and Aayla check out whatever this trap is you want them to walk into.”

“Go to hell!” Siri called again.

Skirata shook his head.  “Woman’s got ears like a kinor bat,” he muttered.  “Sounds good, son.  Captain Rex, you staying here?”

Rex tilted his head fractionally.  “Unless you want me to be boarder number three.  Limited vac-suits, after all.”

“No,” Padmé said.  “I’m going to be boarder number three.  Siri and Aayla will be there; it’ll be safe enough.”

“You sure, _Pad’ika_?” Skirata asked.

“I need to do _something,_ Kal.”  Padmé turned and headed for the airlock.  “Before I start climbing the walls.”

_Venge,_ she thought.  _Where are you?_


	3. The Pieces Begin to Move

Padmé wasn’t sure what she had been expecting to find within the secret room.  Considering that Venge had used it to somehow flee the ship, it should have been no shock to find a tiny hangar, just large enough for a single shuttle.  But she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were missing something.  Part of her didn’t want the answer to be so simple.

The hangar was empty, of course, and the blast doors at the far end were shut tight.

“My suit says there’s air in here,” Siri announced.  She, Padmé, and Aayla all wore pressure suits to deal with the massive decompression in the rest of the ship.  “I’m not taking off my helmet, but that tells me this place has its own generator and life-support system.  Totally independent of the ship’s mains.”

“It seems like this was a private escape route for the captain,” Aayla suggested.  “Perhaps Venge took knowledge of it from his mind.”

Looking around, Padmé happened to turn toward the back wall of the hangar.  She felt her blood run cold.

“I don’t think this belonged to the captain,” she said, and gestured for Siri and Aayla to turn around.

The back wall was a holoscreen.  On it was the face of Darth Plagueis.

He was saying something, but Padmé couldn’t hear anything through the pressure seal of her suit.  She keyed the control panel on the suit’s left arm to activate the external mic.  Immediately, the Muun’s basso voice flooded into her helmet.

“...on making it this far,” he was saying.  “No doubt you tracked Venge’s movements from the bridge using the ship’s security cams.  Of course, this suggests to me that you never thought to question why one of those cams happened to be pointing at a supposedly secret door.”

“We did, actually,” Padmé countered.  “But we decided –”

Plagueis kept talking, but not in a way that suggested he was interrupting her.  The timing and cadence instead told her that this was a recording.  Which made sense, on second thought; a live transmission would have given them the opportunity to trace it.  Even if it had been bounced through every relay in the Inner Rim, there would still have been the chance of a successful track.

“I do feel some measure of regret,” Plagueis continued, “to inform you, whichever members of the Order you may be, that your efforts are futile.  Venge is mine, and indeed always has been – not that he knew it before now.  Whatever promises of alliance he made you were fairly spoken, but beyond his power to fulfill.  I planted a seed, more than ten years ago now.  A seed I named Terminus, for it existed on the boundaries of his mind, and in blossoming it would mark the end of him.”

Siri made a hissing noise, one of dismay.  “That’s not good.  If Venge has been compromised since joining the Order…”

There was no need for her to finish that sentence.  If Venge had indeed been so compromised, then the Sith knew – _everything._   Everything Venge knew.  Command codes, fleet movements, the strengths and weaknesses of individual Jedi.  _Everything._

“I would have liked to witness your deaths,” Plagueis mused, his tone contemplative.  “Full of anguish at the futility of your quest, I have no doubt they would be amusing to view.  But circumstances do not allow it, so I will simply say this: go now to your graves secure in the knowledge that the Sith will prevail, and everything you have accomplished will be undone.”

At the opposite end of the hangar, the blast doors gaped open.  The door they had entered through slammed shut.  The entire hangar depressurized in less than a second, the air within not even sufficient to generate a gust of wind as it rushed out into space.

Plagueis’s recording winked out.

“Clearly,” Padmé said dryly, “he didn’t expect us to be wearing pressure suits.  He should have used a bomb.”

“The ship’s internal sensors might have picked up explosives,” Siri replied.  “That, or a sufficiently powerful Jedi might generate a Force shield capable of deflecting a blast like that.  Depressurizing this bay really would have been the surest way of killing us in any other circumstance.  Points for effort.”  She looked around.  “Well, thanks to his evil monologue, we have new intel.  But the rest of this place looks like a dead end.  Nothing but bare walls.”

Aayla cleared her throat.  “This stain on the floor says otherwise.”

Padmé and Siri both moved to stand next to Aayla, who was crouched over a rainbow-hued stain on the deckplates.  “Looks like engine lubricant,” Padmé suggested.

“Move so the light angles through it more clearly,” Aayla told her, moving to let Padmé take her place.  When Padmé followed her instructions, she could see an imprint left in the stain – the mark of a starship’s landing strut.  It was a distinctive landing strut, too: about the size of her torso, triangular, with the logo of Baktoid Armor clearly visible in the lubricant.

Siri snorted.  “That’s Baktoid for you.  They put their logo on _everything_.”

“When we return to the ship, we can review the known list of Baktoid-line personal spacecraft small enough to fit into a hangar of this size,” Aayla said, “narrowing it to ships with triangular landing struts.  If there are any potential matches, we can filter this ship’s sensor readings for craft of that make during the window when Venge would have been leaving.  From there –” Padmé could hear the smile in her rich Twi’lek voice – “we may be able to extract a hyperspace heading.”

Padmé opened a comm channel to her ship.  “Kal, are you there?  We have news.”

“So do we, _Pad’ika_ ,” Skirata responded immediately.  “Get your _shebs_ back on board.  We have to talk.”

* * *

Captain Gilad Pellaeon approached the private command room of Lord Admiral Thrawn, nervously adjusting his uniform collar.  He’d gotten to know the Lord Admiral rather well over these past months, he thought, and ordinarily wouldn’t find the prospect of a one-on-one meeting with him to be unnerving.  It was, he reflected darkly, this mask-and-blade business that was making him uncomfortable.

The deck thrummed slightly beneath his feet, telling him that the ship had just departed on a new heading.  He didn’t remember ordering any course changes, but perhaps Thrawn had called for one.  With an effort, Pellaeon put it out of his mind; he had business here, and whatever had happened would keep.

The doors slid open, revealing the dimly-lit expanse of the chamber beyond.  Thrawn sat in a chair in the center of the room, surrounded by holographic representations of various works of art.  Pellaeon still didn’t fully understand what Thrawn got out of these meditation sessions, but the campaign against the Separatists seemed to be going reasonably well so far, and he was disinclined to examine things which appeared to be working.

“Come in, Captain,” Thrawn called.  “What do you have for me?”

Pellaeon strode forward and handed his datapad to Thrawn.  “Ambassador Amidala’s ship broke orbit of Corulag approximately twenty minutes ago,” he reported, watching as the Lord Admiral keyed the datapad to display the footage of the elegant Nubian craft jumping to hyperspace.  “The stealth ship you assigned to surveillance duty there pulled their hyperspace vector.  It appears to lead into empty space – there’s no system which could be a probable end-point.”

Thrawn cocked a blue-black eyebrow.  “Interesting.  If they did indeed discover Venge’s trail, this would suggest that he was heading to meet a ship in deep space at a prearranged set of coordinates, rather than going to a specific planet.”

That made Pellaeon grimace.  Betrayal amongst their own ranks, clearly.  “Yes, sir.  Intel has come to the same conclusion.”

Handing the datapad back to Pellaeon, Thrawn steepled his fingers in thought.  “Absent the data they used to obtain the heading, we have no way of determining their endpoint,” he mused.  “But we may reliably assume that they are following a craft launched from the _Usury,_ and that the endpoint will naturally fall within the range of such a craft’s fuel supply.”

“Yes, sir.”  Pellaeon keyed for a new report on the datapad.  “I took the liberty of having Intel analyze the Hapans’ battle records, looking for ships which departed along that precise vector.  There’s only one match: a personal shuttle, Bulwark-class, made by Baktoid Armor.”

“Which has an effective range of only ten light-years due to its size,” Thrawn said.  “Excellent work, Captain.”

Pellaeon felt his chest puff, just a little.  The Lord Admiral did not often bestow compliments.  “Thank you, sir.”

“Ambassador Amidala will no doubt use the same logic we are employing to constrain her search to that ten-light-year span,” Thrawn continued.  “Between that, and the assistance of the two Jedi with her, she should be able to find the meeting point.  Even in the likely scenario of nothing remaining there, she may be able to pick up a drive trail or other indications of activity that will in turn point her to Venge’s next location.”  He keyed something into the control panel of his chair.  “Which means she will be conveniently out of our way while we follow up on _this._ ”

The holographic art show vanished, replaced by a flat image.  Pellaeon recognized an exterior shot of the Supreme Chancellor’s office.  The windows had been blown away, allowing the cam to see inside.  Within the office –

“What in the Nine Hells is that?” Pellaeon breathed.

“That,” Thrawn said, “is the Supreme Chancellor being exposed by Venge as a Sith Lord.  I admit I have been aware of this for some time, but now the entirety of the Republic will know.  This was broadcast across the HoloNet less than ten minutes ago.”

Pellaeon had to take a minute to just breathe, his mind numb from the shock of the revelation.  The Republic was _also_ under the control of the Sith?  And Thrawn had known about it?  Which meant, presumably, that Yoda knew about it as well.

“Is Palpatine at odds with the other Sith, then?” he finally asked.

Thrawn nodded.  “Correct, Captain.  Master Yoda struck a deal with him to create the current tripartite balance of power, given that Plagueis currently presents a greater threat and we would be at a loss to fight the Separatists without Republic support.  This promises to throw our plans into chaos.”  For the first time, he looked directly at Pellaeon.  “Which makes it all the more important that we find Venge before Ambassador Amidala.”

Straightening to an unconscious military attention, Pellaeon met that gaze evenly.  “If I may, Lord Admiral,” he said, deciding to put aside the matter of Palpatine for now, “I am curious as to why that is so important.  This business of going behind the Ambassador’s back, monitoring her covertly – it sits ill with me, frankly.  We _are_ on the same side.”

“We are, Captain,” Thrawn acknowledged.  “But we are not pursuing the same ends.  The Ambassador wants to bring Venge back into the fold – to redeem him, if possible.”  His glowing eyes narrowed.  “This, of course, would remove the option of capturing him, allowing him to escape, and tracking him to Plagueis.”

“Ah.”  Pellaeon thought about that for a moment.  “A precision strike at the head of the Separatists, then?”

“Precisely.  Which is why I have ordered the _Manticore_ to Coruscant.  Venge will no doubt find a way to leave the planet, despite whatever travel restrictions will be put in place as a result of his attack.  When he does, we will be ready.”

“And when the Ambassador inevitably finds out that we’ve done an end-run around her?” Pellaeon asked, not liking the prospect.

Thrawn gave him a slight shrug.  “She will be upset.  She may try to shoot me, as she’s said she will.  But we are not here to serve the desires of individuals, no matter how important they may be.  We are here to win a war.”  He keyed the art back up, relaxing back into his chair.  “Thank you, Captain.”

“Yes, sir.”  It was clearly a dismissal, so Pellaeon turned and saw himself out.

And quietly decided to have other business when the Ambassador confronted the Lord Admiral.


	4. Dead Men's Eyes

Padmé found Kal waiting for her as she, Siri, and Aayla returned to her ship.  “Has Ordo found something?” she asked as soon as she’d doffed her helmet.

“Not just something,” Kal said, his voice full of grim satisfaction.  “Paydirt.”

They repaired to the medbay, where Ordo had a full audiovisual holorig set up, attached to the medical computer which was plugged into the Myrmidon’s exposed brain.  He looked up at them, and there was no mistaking the triumph in his expression, though he did not smile. 

“The Myrmidons are wired for full recording,” he informed Padmé in lieu of a greeting.  “They don’t have sufficient power for a subspace burst – or, perhaps, generating that kind of focused pulse would damage their biological components.  Regardless, that means what they’ve seen and heard can be retrieved by the enemy, but only if they retrieve the corpses themselves.  And this ability works for us, too, now that we’ve figured it out.”

“And this one,” Rex adds, _his_ features brightened by a smile, “has seen some very interesting things.”

Ordo brought up a full-color flat image on the holoprojector.  It was a still frame of Maul leaping in to slice it in half.

“The recording works off of signals being sent to the audial and visual centers of the brain,” Ordo explained, “so once the brain is dead, recording stops.  But look at this.”  He manipulated the controls on the medical computer and sent the image backtracking at a furious pace.  Padmé watched as the Myrmidon’s fight with Maul and Ahsoka played backward, then the Myrmidon stalked in reverse through the halls of the ship, then it left and got on a shuttle with Dooku, and so on.

When they were pulled backward into hyperspace, Ordo skipped the playback of the journey – about eleven hours’ worth of time, Padmé saw from the progress bar.  That was good intel.

Then they were in the hangar of the _Invisible Hand,_ near the very beginning of the recording.  The Myrmidon stood silently by as Plagueis and Dooku spoke.

“There is as yet no sign that the Jedi have attempted to break the siege,” Plagueis was saying.  “Nevertheless, they are bound to make an attempt.  They cannot ignore this challenge to their bargain of protection.”

Dooku inclined his head.  “Yes, Master.”

“When they do eventually assay the blockade, I have no doubt that Venge will come to you,” Plagueis continued.  “Even if it is not a tactically sound move, he burns for vengeance against you.  From his performance against Grievous, I believe he now outmatches you in swordsmanship, but you have access to esoteric arts he does not.”

Padmé did not miss the way Dooku bristled at Plagueis’s casual disparagement of his skill, but the Count nevertheless said nothing.

“The heightened-channel state must work by bringing Terminus to the surface,” Plagueis said, after waiting a moment to see if Dooku would argue his observation.  “He cannot yet be in full control, else he would have given Grievous the recognition code and they would have come back together.  But if Venge’s command of the state slips, I believe the control ratio may change in our favor.  Therefore, do what you must to damage him past the point of finesse.  Once he gives in deeply enough to the Dark Side, Terminus should manifest and he will be ours.”

Finally, Dooku surrendered to the urge to speak.  “My lord, how can you be certain?  This is a phantom you created a decade ago, one which has never shown any signs of appearing before.  Could he not be dormant beyond reach?”

“My arts are not so petty as to be gainsaid by the simple passage of years,” Plagueis replied loftily.  “When Terminus has manifested, give the recognition code.  He will recognize you as an ally and obey your commands.”

Padmé leaned forward, expectant.  This was it, she thought.  This was going to be the key to getting Venge back.

“Forgive me, my lord,” Dooku said.  “I do not think you ever instructed me in this code.”

“Indeed, no one save myself and Grievous, given his errand, know it,” Plagueis replied.  “Not even Sidious is aware of its existence – which has proven a wise move on my part.  Listen well.”  He made a series of hissing, roiling noises, and an involuntary shudder climbed up Padmé’s spine. 

“That’s Sith,” Siri said, her lip curling.  “The language, I mean.  The one spoken by the Sith – the species.  And also the members of the Sith Order.”  She glanced around, saw that everyone was looking at her, and added, “Sith.”

“Thank you, Siri,” Rex told her, his tone extremely dry.  “Well, we have a recording of the recognition signal, whatever it means.  Can we just play it back for him when we find him?”

“That would probably be like asking someone for an ID, and having the _shabuir_ hand you a picture of one,” Kal said, then chuckled at his own cleverness.  “I’d lay odds we need to have someone actually say it to him.”

Ordo clicked his teeth together in what Padmé took to be irritation.  “None of us speak the language.  Even if we could replicate the sounds perfectly, there could be subtleties of intonation or pitch that we’re not picking up.  We can’t see his lips because of the respirator, so if there’s any special tricks to the pronunciation we can’t read them that way.  And look at how Plagueis is holding his left hand while he says the words.  It could just be unconscious, but Sith might have somatic components.  We just don’t have enough information.”

“What is the harm in trying?” Aayla countered.  “The worst that may come is that he knows what we have tried to do, and we are left no worse off than before.  Our plan was already to capture him, if necessary.”

Padmé held up a hand to put a stop to the argument.  “I think it’s worth trying,” she said, “but we need to stack the deck in our favor.  Ordo, please make audio and visual copies of the recognition signal.  A phonetic text rendition too, if you can.  I’m going to do a HoloNet search for academics or other linguistic professionals who speak Sith.”  She smiled at Ordo.  “Thank you for finding this.  It’s good work.”

Ordo started, reflexively, to salute, then nodded instead, as befit recognition from a civilian outside the chain of command.  “Of course, Ambassador.  There is one more thing, before you go.” 

He keyed in a command, enlarging the view of the mag-con shield and open space behind Dooku and Plagueis.  “It’s less exciting than the recognition signal, but we have a good view of the starfield outside the ship here.  I’ve cross-referenced the pattern with the exit vector you supplied for Venge, and I’ve narrowed his drop-out point to within half a light-year cubed.  That’s a lot less space to search than we were expecting.”

Now Padmé felt herself positively beam.  She looked at Kal.  “You raised a smart man, Kal.”

“Don’t I know it,” Kal replied, putting a hand on Ordo’s shoulder.  For his part, Ordo blushed furiously, but remained stoic.  “Good job, son.”

Leaving Ordo to complete his work, Padmé moved to the communications hub.  After the sterile white walls of the medbay, the dark alcove of the hub seemed especially dim and sequestered.  She input her HoloNet access key and waited for the ship to make a connection.  She saw, as she was waiting, that Kal and Rex had both followed, their features outlined in the blue glow of the console screen.

“Should we be going to search that half light-year or so of Ordo’s?” Kal asked her.  “The sooner we do, the less time the trail has to cool.”

“Once I’ve done this HoloNet search, yes,” Padmé replied.  “If we don’t find anything there, then the trail’s officially a dead end, and I want to have our next destination ready.  Venge, or Terminus, or whatever he is now – he’s going to strike somewhere.  When he does, I want us to be ready with this recognition signal.  It might save us a tough fight.”

Rex put in, “For what it’s worth, I agree.  The coordinates Ordo put together are nowhere near any hyperspace lanes or celestial objects.  It’s literally the middle of nowhere, which tells me he rendezvoused with a ship – probably the _Invisible Hand_.  The chances of it still sitting there are low.”

“We might still be able to pick up the ship’s hyperspace wake,” Kal suggested, “if it’s as big as the _Hand_ and there’s no solar wind to get the particles all _osik’la._ ”

“Maybe,” Padmé agreed.  “But it’s a long shot.”  She abruptly realized that, despite the fact that they had been talking for the better part of two minutes, her HoloNet connection was still pending.  This close to a Core World, it should have taken only seconds.  What was going on?

Rex noticed, too.  “Awful long connection time,” he said, sounding suspicious.

“Definitely,” Padmé said.  “I wonder what –”

The connection went through, and it was instantly apparent what was happening.  There was a massive amount of HoloNet activity, eighty times normal peak usage.  And the reason for it was spelled out before her, clear as day.

“Shoot off my _gett’se_ and call me a Neimoidian,” Kal breathed as the video of Venge assaulting Palpatine in his office began to play automatically.  “Palps’s secret is out.  The Republic is going to tear itself apart.”

“When was this?” Rex asked.

“The video was uploaded less than thirty minutes ago,” Padmé replied, her eyes wide.  “I – I don’t even know what to think.  This is going to change everything.”

Kal stabbed his thumb down on the ship intercom.  “Everyone shift your _shebse_ in here.  Double-time!”

Within ten seconds, the rest of the crew had gathered and were watching in stunned silence.  Venge went out the window and Palpatine glowered after him; then the holocam was suddenly drawn to the Sith Lord and the feed went dead.

“Sithspit,” Siri said.

Padmé turned to Ordo.  “How long to Coruscant?”

“At least three hours,” Ordo replied.

“And to the coordinates you calculated?”

“Two.”

Padmé laid her hands flat on the console and began to think furiously.  “Ordo, can you do a calculation for me?”

“Go,” Ordo said.

“Assuming Venge took a faster ship – a ship with a class-one hyperdrive – from the rendezvous point to Coruscant, how long would that journey take him?”

“About two and a half hours,” Ordo said.

“So what do you think the chances are of the _Invisible Hand_ just remaining at those coordinates and waiting for Venge to return after doing his business on Coruscant?”

“Hard to say,” the Captain mused.  “There’s a lot of variables I can’t account for.  Particularly why he only hit Coruscant half an hour ago if he’s been sitting only a couple of hours away from it ever since the Battle of Corulag.”

“Some kind of debriefing, perhaps,” Siri suggested.  “If Plagueis wanted to wring him dry of all the intelligence he’s gathered since he joined up with the Order, that would take a while.”

“Let’s assume that Plagueis debriefed him, he left for Coruscant sometime today, and hit Palpatine half an hour ago,” Padmé said.  “It’s not going to take him long to get off Coruscant – let’s be fair, there’s no way he’s going to die from being thrown out of a window.  If there’s any chance he’ll return to those coordinates, we have to go.  If he goes somewhere else, we’re back to looking for a hyperspace wake.  No worse off than we were.”

“I agree,” Kal said.  “Want to get us moving, son?”

“With pleasure, _Kal’buir._ ”  Ordo spun on his heel and headed for the cockpit.

Aayla spoke next.  “You realize, I hope, that if the _Invisible Hand_ is simply sitting there waiting for him, we will have to deal with it.  And, perhaps more significantly, with Plagueis.”

“I didn’t decide to go after Venge until the moment it became dangerous,” Padmé replied quietly.

“No, you did not,” Aayla confirmed.  “But I doubt you made that decision with the intention of pursuing him past the point of courage and into recklessness.”

Padmé forced herself not to snap.  “Are you going to suggest that my attachment is clouding my judgment, Aayla?”

The Twi’lek smiled.  “We have a saying on Ryloth.  ‘Judgment invites judgment.’  I do not judge your course.  I am content to follow you on it.  I merely make a point.”

Closing her eyes for a moment, Padmé exhaled and nodded.  “And I take it.  We’ll be smart about this.  Full sensor-stealth mode.  If he’s going to get aboard the _Hand_ and we can’t stop him without extreme danger, we won’t try.”

“I think that’s wise,” Siri told her, laying a hand on her shoulder.  “We’ll get him back, Padmé.  One way or another.”

The ship trembled beneath them as it launched itself into hyperspace – hopefully, Padmé thought, toward Venge.


	5. Venge Awakens

Venge woke slowly.  The first thing he noticed was that he was not in any sort of pain.

His hands flew to his face.  He encountered nothing but bare, smooth skin.  No burns, no melted metal.  He felt a few days’ worth of stubble on his chin and cheeks, and a similar amount of hair atop his head.

There was no mask.

He also was missing his lightsaber, his robes, his tunic, and his boots.  He was dressed in a white medbay shift, mercifully not one of the ones open in the back.  He was supine on a hard bench, and the lighting was dim.  Turning his head took effort, but he saw that he was in a cell.

Venge realized he was _seeing_ things.  His eyes worked.

Even as he sat up, wondering what the hell was going on, the cell door hissed open.  Darth Vader strode in, a smirk on his familiar features.

“Feeling better?” he asked.  “Lord Plagueis spent a great deal of time and effort reconstructing your face.”

Venge worked moisture into his suddenly dry mouth.  “What?”

“He commanded your midi-chlorians to regenerate your dermal and ocular cells,” Vader replied.  “Which they did.  You needed it, too; the old fool Dooku had made a mess of you with his Sith flame.”

Deciding to test the waters, Venge asked, “Why are you here?”

It became clear that Vader had been waiting for precisely that question.  He sketched a mocking bow.  “To congratulate you, of course, on your stunning exposure of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine as a Sith Lord.”

Venge’s blood ran cold.  “What are you talking about?”

Withdrawing a datapad from his robe, Vader tossed it to Venge.  Without thinking, Venge caught it out of the air.  There was a still image, a paused vid, on the screen.  He hit the **RESUME** button and watched himself, impossibly, dueling Sidious in his office, in full view of a holocam.

“How long ago was this?” Venge asked.  The last thing he remembered was being hit full in the face with a wall of searing pain, feeling his skin burn, feeling his eyes shrivel.  If Dooku had captured him –

“Only about an hour ago,” Vader replied, obviously gleeful at the chance to tell him all of this.

“I’m still wearing the mask.”

“Yes, well.  ‘You’ needed it in order to sell the deception.”

The way Vader had said the word ‘you,’ and his talk of deception, put Venge even further on edge.  “Speak plainly,” he said, working to control his rage.  He had no problem using his anger, but _he_ was in command of it.  He would not let Vader goad him.  “What is happening here?”

“The end of the Jedi Order.”  Vader gestured at the vid.  “The Republic is about to undergo major upheaval.  Even if Sidious manages to retain his position through political means, their military could try to stage a coup.  Worlds will declare independence, or join the Separatists.  The alliance between the Republic and the Jedi will disintegrate, leaving the Order vulnerable.”

“You still can’t take Kamino,” Venge countered.  “It’s too well-defended now for even the entire Separatist battle fleet to crack.  At least, they couldn’t crack it before our own fleet destroyed so much of your manufacturing infrastructure that you’d never recover.”

Vader made a show of thinking about it.  “That’s true,” he mused.  “If only there were someone on the inside, a collaborator who could bring down the planetary shields.”

“I won’t do it,” Venge said instantly.  “Plagueis can try to brain-twist me, but Yoda will see right through that.  And there’s nothing you can do to compel me to help you otherwise.”

“Firstly, Yoda will _not_ see right through it.  Lord Plagueis quite carefully put forth Darth Ghūl to fix in the minds of the Order how his power over the minds of others might work.  But Ghūl was a blunt instrument.  Lord Plagueis can wield them, but whenever possible he prefers to use more subtle means.  Such as the one that has been with you for more than ten years.  The one that Yoda never detected.”  He pointed again at the vid.  “Terminus.”

Venge looked again at the masked and hooded figure, fighting with his style, using his lightsaber, grasped in a phrik arm just like his own.  “Terminus?”

“An entity woven into the deep structures of your mind by Lord Plagueis, during the first conversation you ever had with him.  You volunteered to serve as a spy on Sidious and Dooku; in turn, _he_ created someone to spy on _you._ ”

The revelation hit Venge like a punch to the gut.  He’d thought he had been speaking with some kind of Force entity, or some manifestation of his subconscious, on Dantooine.  But instead, he’d been speaking to this Terminus creature.  He’d been giving it more and more access to the well of his power, taking in trade the increased ability to channel the Force.

_If he’s been with me this entire time, then – he knows all our plans.  Our procedures, security, fleet deployment, command structure –_

“Yes,” Vader said.  “We know a great deal.  Such as precisely how to disable Kamino’s shields from within.  Which he will do.”

“I’ll kill myself right now if it’s the only way to stop him,” Venge told him.  “And you know I can, and that you can’t stop me.”

Vader shrugged.  “We would prefer you not do that.  Lord Plagueis went to the effort of repairing your face because he _does_ want to use you as an agent, and people are more likely to listen to you if they can look at you without losing their last meal.  But, unfortunately for you, there is nothing you can do to stop him.  Not even killing yourself.”  He crossed his arms.  “He’s not with you any longer.”

Now Venge looked at the vid again, replaying it, studying the cloaked figure.  “A… clone?”

“Lord Plagueis took Terminus from you,” Vader said, grinning.  “He took Terminus and gave him a body, a cloned body, one made carefully in your image.  The warp in your ribs, your scars, your imperfections, all of them were replicated precisely.

“Now, Ambassador Amidala and some of your other comrades are coming after you, using a hyperspace vector we left them enough breadcrumbs to follow.  We even set up an ineffectual trap, to make them think themselves cleverer than Lord Plagueis.  They are intent on saving you, on bringing you back into the fold.  Their desire to redeem you, to help you win your battle with the Dark Side, will give Terminus all the opportunity he needs to tearfully return to them, spinning convincing tales of brainwashing and torture.  They will doubtless take him back to Kamino for a full medical exam.”

His anger soared.  Venge surged to his feet, hands going for Vader’s throat, the Force rushing through him.  But he was still weak, and Vader was both wearing armor and better-trained in hand-to-hand combat.  He turned Venge’s attack and slammed him brutally to the floor of the cell.

“Think on your failure,” he said.  “Very soon now, the Jedi Order will be destroyed, and you will be blamed.  Lord Plagueis will of course allow you to rejoin the Sith of your own free will, afterward.  The entities he can weave out of the Force are useful and cunning, but like Ghūl, Terminus is limited.  They are alive – or they _were_ alive, in the case of Ghūl – but only Sith like you and I can achieve real power, real insight.  He may even give you Sidious as part of the bargain.  Consider it.”

He stepped out of the cell and closed the door behind him.

Venge beat his fists against the door in impotent rage, then lashed out with the Force, denting the walls and smashing the power of his will against the barred egress.  But they had put him in a properly secure cell, as proof against Force users as any could be.  He was well and truly stuck in here.

Collapsing back onto the bench, Venge forced himself to think.  It was absolutely like Vader, and Plagueis, to taunt him with their plan.  Making him ruminate endlessly on his helplessness to stop them certainly would have a detrimental effect on his morale, at the very least.  But as he sat there and breathed, just breathed, something felt off.

It wasn’t the story of the cloned body and the other self Plagueis had woven into him, then yanked out of him just as easily.  That, he believed.  Even now, he scanned the vaults of his memory and found curiously blank spaces contained within that conversation with Plagueis.  There had been pain, and bargaining, but he didn’t remember ever falling unconscious.

No, it was something else.

Venge carefully ran everything he had just learned through his mind, and found some inconsistencies.  The regeneration of his face, for one.  If Plagueis really wanted him to rejoin the Sith after Terminus burned him with the Order forever, he should have left Venge disfigured, and held the regeneration of his damaged tissue as a lure, an incentive.  But he hadn’t.  Why?

Then there was the matter of Terminus having been taken from him.  It was clear now to Venge that the conversation on Dantooine had been Terminus getting him to willingly bring down walls keeping the entity from gaining control.  It was just as clear that the increase of focus and power resulting from his lowering of those defenses was because he could now access the Force with the entirety of his being, rather than with the limited portion left to him after Terminus had been woven into his mind.

_I’ve been fighting at a handicap for years._   He had never noticed, because he’d grown steadily in power even after the conversation with Plagueis, and whatever weakness he’d felt afterward he had attributed to losing the fight with Maul.

But even now, when he reached out, he could feel that he had a greater command of the Force, that it flowed through him more freely, but the current was still restricted.  It did not reach the limits he had achieved when he had been blended with Terminus in the heightened-channel state.

They had also left him his phrik arm.  If they had wanted to seriously hamper his ability to escape or even defend himself, they would have removed it.

Finally, while it was certainly advantageous to wear down his resolve by confronting him with his impending ostracization by the Order for Terminus’s betrayal, Venge simply found it too convenient, and too foolish, for them to have revealed the entirety of their masterful plan to him.  Accidents happened.  Prisoners escaped.  If he made it back in time, armed with this new knowledge, he could stop his other self’s backstab before it happened.

Venge grinned.  Unless Plagueis was operating at a truly ridiculous level of move and counter-move, he knew what was going on.

His face had been regenerated so his friends and allies would believe him when he said who he was.  Their plan to have Terminus pose as him and bring down Kamino’s shields had been revealed to him because they intended to have him escape and try to stop it.  They had left him his phrik arm to help him make good that escape.

The Force’s power was still limited in him because Plagueis had taken Terminus and put something else in its place.

He seated himself on the floor.  Plunging into meditation, he went deep into the recesses of his own mind, peeling back layers of sensation and thought, letting the Force guide his will through his own labyrinthine defenses and nested traps.  He broke through into the lightless place within his subconscious, the atavistic place of fight and flight, where there was no rational thought.

There, he found _it_.

It was like a sphere of blackness, so black that it was visible as a void even within the total darkness of his deep mind.  Tiny tendrils seemed to extend from it, reaching out into the abyss, but they were not yet fastened to anything.  It was a seed, planted there by Plagueis, to slowly grow and eventually sprout into… _something._

He seized it in a vise of pure intent.  It writhed, changing from a sphere to a wriggling mass of spastic tentacles, fighting him.  He altered his metaphorical grip, entangling it in strangling cords.  It changed again, growing hard and unyielding, pushing outward like a bulwark, threatening to break his cords.  Venge countered, sharpening the entirety of his will to a lethal dagger and stabbing a single point of that vast, hard shape.

Time passed without his being aware of it.  He struggled in the dark with what Plagueis had forced into his mind.  Minutes, or perhaps hours, passed.  Always it shifted into some new form, and always he countered, knowing that if he let up his offensive for even the barest moment it would go on the attack and begin devouring his mind, just as Plagueis had intended, though earlier than he had planned.

He thought of Padmé, and Rex, and the friends he had made, unlikely though they were.  He thought of belonging to something, of being recognized as someone worthwhile.

He redoubled his efforts and crushed the thing with a final, satisfying blast of anger.

Immediately, the Force burned through him brighter than ever before, sweeping the shadowy remnants out.  He breathed deeply, calmly.

He opened his eyes.

Now, Venge knew, it was a waiting game.  Sooner or later – hopefully sooner – there would be an opening.  Plagueis would be counting on him to seize it and escape, to try to foil Terminus.  If he failed, Terminus would bring down Kamino’s shields.  If he succeeded, the trap buried within his mind would be sprung, and doubtless it would force him to finish what Terminus had started.

Or so Plagueis thought.

With a smile, Venge laid himself down on the bench and closed his eyes.  Almost immediately, he was asleep.


	6. The Osik Hits the Fan

Sitting in the cockpit of her starship, minutes from decanting at the rendezvous coordinates, Padmé rolled the alien syllables of the Sith recognition signal across her tongue.

They had been fortunate enough to get in hypercomm contact with Master Jocasta Nu, still the Keeper of the Jedi Archive, who had some small knowledge of the dead language.  According to her, the long, roiling noise translated roughly as, _Awaken and recognize one vested with the power of the Dark Side._

She hoped that armed with the correct pronunciation and the knowledge of what the words actually meant, she would be able to reach Venge.

“I’m pretty sure you have it down, _Pad’ika_ ,” Kal commented from the copilot’s seat.

Turning to him, Padmé gave him a wry smile.  “Sorry.  I would regret it forever if we botched our one chance to get him back because I couldn’t say the word _zerekzigil_ with the right trill.”

“Even if this one doesn’t go through, there’ll be others,” Kal told her.  “You can’t go into a mission thinking, ‘It’s all over if I fail,’ because when you think about failure, it happens a _shabla_ lot more than when you don’t.”

“I know.”  Padmé checked the navcomp, which told her they were three minutes out.  “Everything just feels like it’s teetering on the edge, Kal.  The Republic is about to be turned inside out, and the Order’s probably going to lose its most valuable ally.  If we lose Venge, too…”

He laid a hand on her shoulder.  “Doesn’t bear thinking about, like I said.  The key’s being prepared for the worst, not dreading it.”

The metallic ring of armored boots on deckplates announced Ordo’s entrance into the cockpit.  He settled into the sensor station seat behind Kal.  “Are you giving her the ‘thinking about failure’ talk, _buir?_ ”

“Maybe,” Kal said.  “Maybe not.  Maybe worry less about what I’m doing and more on making sure your _shebs_ is prepared for when we go hot.”  His words were those of a harsh sergeant, preparing his men for battle, but the affection in his voice took any sting out of them.

Ordo gave the back of his father’s chair a playful punch.  “Miserable old _di’kut,_ ” he said, his tone just as affectionate.  “All your lads are off to war and now I’m the only one at hand whose life you can make difficult.”

Padmé was about to interject when the blue glow of hyperspace collapsed into the star-speckled blackness of interstellar space.  “We’re here,” she said, hands moving for the controls.  “Readings –”

The ship shuddered as a turbolaser blast slapped it across the dorsal axis.  Its shields held, but the sheer force of the shot sent it into a crazed spin.  The inertial compensators failed, and Padmé felt the intense gee-forces crush her into her seat.

“Hard contact!” Ordo barked, his voice strained by the centripetal assault on his body.  He swiveled in his seat and keyed the sensor console.  “ _Invisible Hand_ at forty-one mark eighty-seven!”

Padmé kicked the ship into a dive, firing braking thrusters to cancel out the spin.  “Going evasive!” she snapped.   _So much for dropping out in sensor-stealth mode._  Stabbing at the intercom, she called, “Rex, Siri, Aayla!  Report!”

The intercom crackled with the sound of discharging hydraulic steam from the other end of the line.  “Shield capacitors back-flashed into the compensators!” Rex said.  “I’m trying a manual bypass –”  His voice cut off.  There was the sound of electric current arcing from point to point, the cockpit lights dimmed, and then Padmé could suddenly breathe again.  The crushing pressure lifted from her chest.  “That did it!”

Siri and Aayla moved into the cockpit.  “We were on our way up when we were hit,” Siri said.  “Even Jedi have trouble when they’re thrown into a wall and held there.”

“Anything broken?” Skirata asked.

“We will be fine,” Aayla told him.  “What is the _Invisible Hand_ ’s status?”

Ordo brought up a tactical grid, split-screened on the main display.  “She’s rolling to bring her port broadsides into play.  Once she does that, there’s going to be more fire than we can evade.”

“Got it.”  Padmé keyed in a new course, guiding her ship parallel to the central axis of the much larger ship, heading for its engines.  “If we can pull a fast dive through their engine wash, they might lose sensor focus on us.  Give us a chance to –”

Before she could finish the thought, a small personal attack craft flashed back into realspace directly in their path.  Even as Padmé began altering course to avoid a collision, another ship decanted as well – a massive, dagger-shaped _Venator_ cruiser, hot on the smaller craft’s tail.

“No ID on the little ship,” Ordo reported.  “But the big one reads as the _Manticore._   Lord Admiral Thrawn’s vessel.”

Padmé felt a jolt of fury hit her.  Even as she continued to dodge fire from the _Invisible Hand,_ she keyed in a hail to the _Manticore._   “Lord Admiral, what are you doing here?” she asked.  “How did you get these coordinates?”

Thrawn’s cool voice crackled back over the comm a moment later.  “We are in pursuit of that attack ship.  We believe Venge is aboard.  When we attempted to interdict him above Coruscant, he managed to evade us and jump to hyperspace.  We traced his vector, cross-referenced it with _your_ vector leaving Corulag, and the intersection of the two provided us with this location.”

Cold fury flooded through Padmé’s blood.  “Not only did you try to snatch Venge out from under me, you were also spying on me?”

“Call it what you like,” Thrawn said, his tone every bit as cold and regal as hers.  “The end result is that we are now here, and we are moving to engage the _Invisible Hand._   Considering that you would not have been able to deal with the ship yourselves, I think you ought to be more grateful for our presence.”

Padmé viciously closed the comm circuit.  “That red-eyed bastard,” she hissed.  “He’s toying with us!  He wants to get Venge himself!”

“What does he stand to gain, though?” Siri asked.  “If we get Venge back instead of him –”

Aayla sighed.  “We would try to help him.  I expect the Lord Admiral would prefer to use him.”

Keying in an intercept course for the attack ship and pushing her own craft’s engines to their limits, Padmé continued juking and jinking through sheets of scarlet turbolaser fire.  “I think that’s it exactly.  But we’re not going to give him that chance.  The navcomp tells me we’ve got an eighty percent chance of getting into tractor range before that ship can make it to the _Invisible Hand_ ’s hangar.  Everyone get ready for a boarding action!”

Kal and Ordo both slammed their helmets into place the moment she said that, and she had no doubt Rex was doing the same – if he wasn’t wearing his helmet already.  Siri and Aayla both readied their lightsabers.  “Which airlock?” Siri asked.  “Port or ventral?”

“Let’s use the port one if possible,” Padmé said.  “It’ll let two people through at once instead of one.  That might be crucial.”  In response, her crew – her friends – started trooping back toward the port airlock.

The pilot board whined at her: the attack ship had accelerated even further.  Her chance of intercept was rapidly dwindling.  She couldn’t coax any more power from the generator to feed the engines; everything was already –

_Wait._

Padmé keyed the intercom.  “Everyone hold on!”  Fingers dancing over her board, she input a series of commands and then hit **EXECUTE.**

The entire ship bucked and the hull rang.  “Were we hit again?” Rex asked.

“Negative,” Padmé said, watching the intercept probability shoot back up past eighty percent and hover at ninety-seven.  “I needed more power for the engines, and I’m not lowering shields, so I ejected the hyperdrive.  It’s no longer drawing power, and the engines have less mass to accelerate without it.”

There was a harsh sound from the intercom which she knew had to be Kal laughing.  “Ejecting the hyperdrive in the middle of nowhere just for a little more temporary speed?  _Mandokarla!_ ”

“Yes, very _Mandokarla,_ ” Ordo seconded, his voice dry.  “Let’s just hope that we don’t need to go to hyperspace in this ship ever again.”

“Life is risk.”  Padmé triggered the tractor beam, which leapt out and snagged the attack ship in its invisible grip.  She flipped her ship over, aligning the port airlock with the attack ship’s aft ingress.  A quick application of maneuvering thrusters, aided by the tractor beam, brought the two ships together in an airtight seal, despite the efforts of the other craft’s pilot to stop precisely that from happening.

“We’re clear!”  Padmé told them.

Kal’s shout of _Oya!_ was audible from both the intercom and the hallway as it rung throughout the ship.  Padmé’s status board lit up, telling her that the port airlock had been opened.

Then the ship bucked wildly.  She was nearly thrown from her seat.  A split second later it bucked again, in the opposite direction, and this time Padmé was unable to keep herself from being thrown to the deck.

She clawed her way back up only moments later and looked in disbelief at the sight through her viewscreen.

The attack ship’s bridge module had been jettisoned.  The craft must have been custom-designed, incorporating escape pod functionality into the chassis surrounding the cockpit.  Even now, tiny blue points of light flared as the pod accelerated toward the hangar of the _Invisible Hand_.

That had been the first jolt.  The second had been from the _Invisible Hand_ ignoring the danger posed by the _Manticore_ to swing around, showing the other capital ship its engines, and snare the conjoined ships in a tractor beam of its own.

They were being pulled in.

“ _Pad’ika,_ what the _shab_ ’s going on?”

“We’re caught in a tractor beam,” she told Kal.  “We’re being pulled in.  There’s nothing I can do without depressurizing the entire ship.”

She sat in silence for a moment, watching the _Invisible Hand_ grow larger in the viewscreen.  Rex summed up their situation nicely.

“Well.  Not likely we’ll need the hyperdrive again, at least.”


	7. Thrawn's Skifter

“Status report, Captain.”

Pellaeon scanned his display, feeling his jaw tighten at what it showed.  “The _Invisible Hand_ has the Ambassador’s ship in a tractor beam,” he reported.  “She successfully initiated an airlock seal between her ship and our target, so both are being drawn in.”

With a twitch of his lip, Thrawn asked, “Can we destroy the beam emitters or use one of our own tractor beams to disrupt their lock?”

“The emitters are too well-shielded at present,” Pellaeon replied.  “And disrupting the _Invisible Hand_ ’s beam might cause massive depressurization of the Ambassador’s ship due to the airlock seal.”

“So you are saying that our opponents are going to tractor in the Ambassador and her crew, jump to lightspeed, and leave us here, and there is nothing we can do about it?”

Turning stiffly to the Lord Admiral, Pellaeon nodded.  “Yes, sir.  I’m afraid that’s my analysis.”

Thrawn’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly, and a quiet sigh escaped him.  “I was hoping to keep this in reserve,” he murmured, seemingly to himself.  Then his glowing red eyes refocused on the principal weapons officer, a clone named Dicer.  “Lieutenant Dicer,” he said.  “Open your weapon subroutines command tree and execute special directive eighteen dash grek vev.  Authorization Thrawn, besh seven aurek trill.”

“Aye, sir,” Dicer replied.  Pellaeon watched the man’s hands dance over his console, inputting first the command and then Thrawn’s authorization code.

Without warning, all the bridge lights and console screens dimmed.  The _Manticore_ shuddered.  Pellaeon felt the dick pitch underneath him and he scrambled to get a hold of his console to keep himself from falling.  “Sir,” he said, trying to maintain some semblance of calm, “what just happened?”

“Report!” the navigation officer, Tricks, called out.  “We have entered a gravity well!”  Before Pellaeon could ask the obvious question – how the hell such a thing was possible in the literal middle of nowhere, with no sufficiently sized masses present – Tricks continued.  “Wait.  Scratch that, sir.  We appear to be _generating_ a gravity well.  Not a standard one, however.  It’s a sort of… cone.  Oriented along our central axis.”

Pellaeon whipped his head around to look up at Thrawn.  The Lord Admiral raised a blue-black eyebrow and leaned forward slightly in his command chair.  “I take it the _Invisible Hand_ is in the center of that cone?”

“Yes, sir,” Tricks replied.

“Lord Admiral, this – this is impossible,” Pellaeon sputtered.  “The technology for creating a lightspeed-interdicting gravity well – it simply doesn’t exist.”

“Wrong, Captain,” Thrawn told him, his voice almost gentle.  “It does indeed exist.  I myself took a working copy of the device from a marauding nomadic species known as the Vagari, in a battle at the edge of Chiss space.  I have been keeping that device in reserve for a critical juncture.”  His eyes narrowed.  “Thanks to the Ambassador’s presence here, we now find ourselves at such a one.”

Pellaeon processed this as quickly as he could.  “I’ve never heard of the Vagari.”

“There is no reason you would have,” Thrawn replied offhandedly.  “Before I encountered them, they had never made contact with any Republic worlds or species.  Afterward… well.  Let us simply say that now they never will.”

“Lord Admiral!” the sensor operator spoke up, his tone urgent.  “The _Invisible Hand_ is coming about.  She’s bringing all her weapons online.  It looks like she’s figured out that we’re the ones generating the gravity well.”

“They will no doubt attempt to destroy us, or at least disable us sufficiently to allow them to escape,” Thrawn said.  “The real battle begins now, gentlemen.  Let us not disappoint our adversaries.”

“Shall I summon reinforcements, Lord Admiral?” Pellaeon asked.

Thrawn waved his hand negligently.  “I have already done so.  The 501st is on its way with all speed, approximately twenty-five minutes out.  The Ambassador has that long to complete her mission and get off the _Invisible Hand._ ”

Pellaeon felt his throat tighten.  “Sir?”

“We cannot definitively confirm Plagueis’s presence on that vessel,” Thrawn told him.  “But it _is_ his flagship.  Until such a time as we can be assured of his absence, we must proceed on the assumption that he is aboard, and that if we destroy the _Invisible Hand,_ we destroy him.  What this means is that we must fight a delaying action until the 501st arrives – and then crush the _Invisible Hand_ to dust.”

* * *

Vader felt the deck vibrate beneath his feet as the _Invisible Hand_ ’s shields deflected another broadside from the _Manticore._   He stared, anger mounting, at the symbol floating in front of him – the Neimoidian equivalent of a hold sign.  This was unacceptable.  He needed to speak to Lord Plagueis _now._

Finally, nearly two minutes after he had initially hailed his Master, the Muun’s visage appeared.  “Lord Vader,” Plagueis said.  “From the sensor data coming in with your hail, I see you are under attack.”

“It is not only that, my lord,” Vader told him quickly.  “The _Manticore_ has some sort of unknown technology.  It is generating a gravity well which is preventing us from entering hyperspace.”

Plagueis’s brows shot up.  “They have been concealing this weapon for just such a time, it would seem.”

“My lord, my nearest reinforcements are close to an hour away,” Vader told him.  “Intelligence suggests that the Order’s, on the other hand, are less than half an hour distant.  I can destroy the _Manticore_ in a straight fight, but they are running with full defenses and focusing ion bombardments on my weapons systems to drag out the conflict.  I will not be able to disable them before their reinforcements arrive.”

Plagueis hissed through his transpirator.  “What of Venge, Terminus, and the Ambassador?”

“Their ship is secured in the hangar bay and surrounded,” Vader replied.  “Terminus has been successfully retrieved.  Venge is ready to be allowed to escape, assuming the ship is not destroyed beneath us.”

“Yoda helped his cause far more than he knows when he recruited that Chiss to command his armies,” Plagueis growled.  “Thrawn has badly disrupted the timing of this operation.  Terminus was supposed to have time on Kamino to update us on its current defenses before Venge made his reappearance.  Now…”  His eyes narrowed.

“My lord?” Vader asked.

He could feel the ripple in the Force as Plagueis came to a decision.  “There is nothing for it.  Sacrifice the _Invisible Hand,_ Lord Vader.  You will arrange for a ‘power failure’ in Venge’s cell block due to battle damage, then make your way to the aft hangar and escape in your Infiltrator.  Venge will have his confrontation with Terminus now, with the Ambassador present.  Whichever way it falls out, we will still have an agent among the Order, ready to bring the planet’s shields down.”

Vader resisted the urge to bring up the point that they had no idea if the seed Plagueis had planted within Venge’s mind would sprout as expected.  His Master had never attempted such a deep-seated or subtle control mechanism, not even with Terminus.

“Yes, my Master,” he said instead.

“Be certain not to engage Venge or any of the Ambassador’s party,” Plagueis emphasized.  “You are too powerful to be thwarted with the ease the circumstances require.  It would strain the credulity of their return to Kamino.”

“Of course, my lord.”  Vader bowed.

Plagueis signed off without further word.

Striding out of the communications cluster, Venge turned to the Neimoidian captain of the _Invisible Hand._   “Continue your attempts to disable the enemy capital ship,” he said.  “Lord Plagueis has informed me that we have unexpected reinforcements less than half an hour away, and that the Order’s own forces will not arrive in time to counter them.  I will be going below to deal with the situation in the main hangar.”

“Of course, my Lord Vader,” the little toad wheezed, his tone layered with obsequiousness.  “If there is anything else I can do –”

Vader was already heading into the turbolift.

* * *

“What the _shab_ are they all just waiting for?” Skirata muttered.

Padmé looked out the viewscreen at the hundreds of battle droids surrounding her ship.  She honestly had no idea.  If they tried to storm her ship, it would be a costly battle for them, but simple numerical advantage would prevail.  There was no way Padmé or any of her companions would be able to get through the ring of droids to disappear into the rest of the dreadnought, either. 

“Maybe for Plagueis to come down here and brain-twist us himself,” Rex muttered.  “I’m inclined to make that difficult for him, myself.  We can always overload the ship’s reactor.  Take him out with us.”

With a wince, Padmé said, “Last resort, Rex.  We came here to save someone, not to die.”

“Noted, but I agree with Captain Rex,” Ordo spoke up.  “Trading the six of us for the head of the CIS and the Sith would be a good deal.”

“Still not one I’m inclined to make,” Padmé told him.  “I –”

She cut herself off as the ring of droids parted.  A black-clad, hooded figure was making its way across the hangar deck, heading straight for their ship.  From its height and the length of its limbs relative to its body, it was clearly not Plagueis.

“Do you think it is Venge?” Aayla asked.  “I cannot get a sense of him in the Force.”

Before Padmé could answer, the figure halted just outside the ship.  Looking straight into the bow holocam, it raised its hands to its hood, then lowered it.

It was Venge, but he had changed.  His hair and beard were mostly gone; it looked like he sported only a few days’ growth of each.  His eyes were the same, but the skin around them was no longer covered in tattoos of esoteric Sith symbols.

His irises burned the bright, poisonous yellow of the Dark Side.

“Send out Padmé,” he said into the cam.  “I want to talk with her.  If you do, I promise that the rest of you will have the chance to go free, unharmed.  If you don’t, I will have the droids open fire en masse and slag your ship.

“You have ten seconds.”


	8. Hangar Meltdown

Venge had certainly known that an opportunity for escape would be presented to him.  The Sith needed him to return to Kamino, after all, or at least they thought they did.

But he was almost insulted at the obvious transparency of the ‘accident’ which gave him his chance.

The ship began to vibrate with the impact of turbolasers and missiles, which meant it was under fire.  If he had been in charge, he would have arranged for a convenient power loss to this deck.  Without the magnetic interlocks activated within the cell door, it would be a matter of only seconds for a sufficiently powerful Force user to open it.

Instead, the door hissed open to admit a medical droid, followed by two Super Battle Droids.  The med-droid raised one arm, brandishing a syringe in its manipulator.  “Security protocols require all prisoners to be subjected to medical anesthesia in combat situations,” it buzzed in a toneless voice.  “Please roll up your sleeve.”

Venge raised an eyebrow at it.  “I’ll pass, thank you.”

“This is not a request.  Please roll up your sleeve.”  It strode toward him and jabbed the needle at him.  With a quick, contemptuous motion, Venge caught the droid’s wrist in his phrik hand and crushed it effortlessly.  Then he swung its body into the two Super Battle Droids, toppling them.  A quick jab of his prosthetic hand into each of their primary motivators rendered them lifeless.

Of course, the medical droid had ‘forgotten’ to close the door behind it.

Still, if he was too obviously disgusted by the apparent lack of care being put into this manufactured escape, it might compromise his ability to play the dupe.  So Venge put on an appropriately self-satisfied expression as he stepped through the cell door and began running for the main hangar.

Even if he were being allowed to go, he was going to make his escape both stylish and painful for the Sith.

* * *

Her heart thudding in her throat, Padmé stepped off the ramp of her ship onto the deckplates of the hangar.  Droids surrounded her, blasters raised.

In front of her stood Venge.

“I’m here,” she told him.  “I – I came looking for you.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Venge replied.  “I’m a liability now.  Or did the warrant for my arrest issued by Yoda mean something other than what it seemed?”

Padmé winced.  “I opposed that warrant.  It was a public-relations move.  I said it might save face for the Order, but it would poison you against us.”

“Well, it seems you were uncannily prescient,” Venge sniffed.  “Tell me, is there a warrant out for your arrest now, too?  Or is it only the Force-using tools that the Order wants to destroy as soon as they display any individual initiative?”

Her throat tightened.  “Venge, is… is that what you’re calling what you did to Dooku at Corulag?  Having to kill him instead of capturing him is one thing.  But you beat him to death.”

With a growl, Venge began to pace back and forth.  “It was instinct,” he said.  “He hit me with a powerful attack, and I retaliated without thinking.  But I got revenge for my arm, I weakened the Sith, and –”

“You weakened the Sith?” Padmé interrupted.  “Venge, you may have killed Dooku, but your attack on Palpatine exposed him!  Our alliance with the Republic is going to be destroyed.  Even if he keeps his position, the balance of power is going to be badly shifted.”

“Don’t you see, Padmé?” Venge fired back.  “I let myself be taken to Plagueis and agreed to expose Palpatine because the Sith’s true power has always been in the shadows, in hiding.  Now they have all been exposed.  I used Plagueis’s fear of Sidious to destroy the last of their secrecy.  The Sith and the CIS are two different things.  If we can bring down the Sith themselves, the CIS will fall in short order.”

His first sentence didn’t scan, and Padmé could not help but frown.  “I saw a recording.  Plagueis said something about a… seed.  ‘Terminus.’  Something like what he did to Qui-Gon.  Is that who ‘took’ you to Plagueis?  Is he still in control now?”

Venge hesitated, and Padmé suddenly experienced an intense sensation of déjà vu.  He’d exhibited this precise hesitation back when they had first begun seeing one another, when she’d only known him as Ben.  He’d shown it whenever she’d asked a question about him which he hadn’t wanted to answer, but also hadn’t wanted to lie about.  The pause had been him manufacturing a truthful answer which nevertheless protected his secret.

“Terminus could only gain control when I was in a heightened-channel state,” he said.  “And I brought on that state with the mask.  But after Coruscant, I got it off.  He’s dormant again, and he’s going to stay that way.”

So he wasn’t denying Terminus’s existence.  There was the kernel of truth in the story he was spinning, and Padmé suspected that was all that was true about it.  But at the same time, she sensed that if she continued to press, it would actively work against her goal of reaching Venge and convincing him to return with her.  If she didn’t get him to come back, then there was no chance of their being able to fix whatever had been broken in his mind – to root out the seed.

“Okay,” Padmé said, injecting just the right amounts of calm and acceptance into her tone.  “Listen to me, Venge.  You’ve exposed the Sith.  But if you stay with Plagueis, he’ll do to you what he did to Qui-Gon, if he hasn’t already.  We need to get you out of here.  Come back with me.  The Order has helped people back from the Dark Side before.”

He shook his head, not looking at her.  “I’m useful to the Order _because_ I use the Dark, Padmé.  They can’t afford to redeem me, because I’ll lose my effectiveness if they do.  But they also can’t be seen utilizing me any longer, because of what happened with Dooku.  I need to stay here, keep working against them from the inside.  I –”

“That’s exactly what Plagueis wants you to think!  He wants you isolated, thinking you’re still in control!  That’s the easiest way to manipulate someone!”  Heedless of the danger posed by the battle droids surrounding her and her ship, Padmé took three steps toward Venge.  “Please, Venge.  You might not be able to publically be the Justicar any longer, but you can still help the Order.  We need you.”

Venge stopped pacing and whirled on her.  “‘We’ need?” he asked.  “Or ‘I’ need?”

Padmé flinched, but stood her ground.  “What I said to you that night on Coruscant hasn’t changed.  I do still need you.”  She motioned back toward her ship.  “Rex is here, too.  I’m sure he needs you just like I do, Venge.”

That made Venge twitch.  He looked at the ship for a long moment, then back at Padmé.  “I can’t,” he said, the words sounding thick and forced.  “I have to stay.  We won’t win otherwise.”

“How do you know that this certainty of yours isn’t manufactured by Plagueis?” Padmé demanded.  “You can’t trust your own thoughts around someone like him.  Come back with us and let us help you get your head clear.”  She took his flesh-and-blood hand in her own.  “Please.”

He looked at her, anguish etched into his features.  “What if this is what he wants?  If I’m supposed to go back with you so I can turn and betray you later?”

“Then that’s something we’ll deal with,” Padmé told him.  “We’ve survived so much, Venge.  We’re not going to let this break us.  Come on.”  She took a careful step back toward her ship, exerting steady pressure on his hand.

He let her pull him halfway up the ramp before he tore his hand from her grip and spun away.  “The risk is too great.  I can’t.  Just get back in your ship and go.  The droids won’t stop you.”

“That’s enough,” Padmé said sternly.  “I know heroic sacrifices are romantic, but staying _isn’t_ a sacrifice.  It doesn’t accomplish anything but play into Plagueis’s hands.  Now come _on._   We’re going to help you.  All of us are.”

Venge’s entire body seemed to shudder as he tried to move both toward her and away from her at the same time.  He looked at her, the golden glow of the Dark Side fading from his eyes.  “You think it’s possible?”

“I know it is,” Padmé said.  “Come on, Venge.  Let’s go home.”

A hesitant, almost childish smile quirked at Venge’s lips.  “I think,” he said, “I’d like that.”

She took his hand again and began to lead him up the ramp of her ship.

Then she stopped dead at the sound of a familiar voice, echoing from the far end of the hangar.  “ _PADMÉ!  STOP!  IT’S A TRAP!_ ”

Padmé jerked her head around in the direction of that voice, eyes widening, and saw him: Venge, ducking and dodging through a forest of battle droids, blowing them off their feet with the Force as he plowed past them toward her.

She looked at the man whose hand she held in her own.  “What in the nine hells is going on?” she hissed.

He looked at her, eyes wide with shock and alarm.  “I don’t know, I swear!” he said.  “Plagueis – could he have cloned me?”

The droids were unable to open fire against the other Venge en masse for fear of hitting their own tightly-packed ranks, but those closest to him were still shooting at him.  He batted the bolts aside with his phrik hand – Padmé glanced at _her_ Venge, and he had one too, what was going on here? – or dodged them, but there were hundreds between him and the ship and he wasn’t going to make it without a lightsaber.

“If you’re on our side,” Padmé said to Venge, “then call the droids off of him.  We need to figure out what’s going on.”

“I can’t!” Venge told her.  “He’s activated their self-defense protocols!  They’re not going to respond to commands until the threat is eliminated.”

“Then it’s time for plan B.”  She looked at the bow holocam, knowing her team would be keeping an eye on its display.  “Get out here, everyone.  We have a bunch of tinnies to slot.”

Seconds later, two Jedi, a Mandalorian mercenary, and two clone Captains boiled out of the ship, lightsabers and blasters blazing.

The battle was joined.


	9. Orders of Battle

Vice-Admiral Anakin Skywalker braced himself reflexively as his ship, the _Indomitable,_ dropped out of hyperspace into a combat zone.

“Enemy dreadnought on scanners!” the sensor officer barked.  “ _Invisible Hand_ confirmed!”

“Have the fleet move in to attack,” Anakin told him.  “Lieutenant Avery, get me Lord Admiral Thrawn.”

“On it, sir,” she replied.  A moment later, she looked up at him and said, “Channel open.”

“Lord Admiral, this is Vice Admiral Skywalker,” Anakin said.  “Looks like you could use a hand.”

Thrawn’s coolly modulated voice sounded through the bridge speakers.  “If it would not be too inconvenient, Vice-Admiral.”

“Terms of engagement?” Anakin asked.  “Are we requesting or accepting surrender?”

There was the barest moment of hesitation.  “Such a request, if granted, might bring Darth Plagueis within close proximity of friendly troops,” Thrawn replied.  “He would be too dangerous a prisoner.  We destroy the ship, giving no quarter.”

“Do we know that Plagueis is aboard?”

“No.  But we know he has used this vessel as his personal flagship since the beginning of the war.  Even if he is not aboard, we must act on the assumption that he is unless offered definitive proof.”

Which made sense, though it hardly helped Anakin feel better about destroying a now heavily-outnumbered enemy ship with no quarter given.  Still, this was war, and this was precisely the sort of scenario for which he had left the Jedi.  He was a soldier, and soldiers followed orders and destroyed the enemy.

“Be advised,” Thrawn continued, “that we have friendlies currently aboard.  I estimate that with your participation in the battle, they will have perhaps seven minutes to make good their escape before the ship’s destruction.  I will take full responsibility for their loss if they should fail to effect their exit.”

Anakin’s stomach clenched, but he forced his voice to remain calm and level.  “Understood, sir.”  He made a cutting motion at Avery, who closed the channel.

“Any special instructions, Vice-Admiral?”  That was the _Indomitable_ ’s captain, an Alderaanian officer named Antilles who had joined the Order some months back.  “Do we give our people more time than the Lord Admiral suggests?”

_You are not a Jedi.  You are a soldier.  Soldiers follow orders and destroy the enemy._

Even if, by doing so, he killed Padmé?

Yes.  She was important to him, tremendously important, but no one person could be more important than winning the war.  She would tell him the same thing, if she were here or she had the ability to contact him.  This was not about his personal wants or needs.

“No,” he said.  “Fore shields only, Captain.  Put the rest of our discretionary power into engines and weapons.  We’re taking out the _Invisible Hand_.”

_Forgive me,_ he thought, letting the sentiment echo out through the Force despite Padmé’s inability to sense it.

He had a job to do.

* * *

Venge blasted away a cluster of Super Battle Droids with a sweep of his hand.  He was amazed at how much more strongly the Force flowed through him.  He’d had no idea the extent to which Terminus had been invisibly clouding his potential, restricting the energy available to him – and how it had been doing so for years.

_All in an effort to ensure that when he approached me, offered more power, I would not only say yes, but that he would have power to give.  My own power, doled out back to me._   He ground his teeth and let his renewed anger energize his limbs.  An SBD rushed him, its blaster-hand whipping around toward his face, and he smashed his flesh-and-blood fist clean through its reinforced chest plates, the Force augmenting his strength and power to incredible heights.

There was Terminus, Venge’s lightsaber in hand, cutting down droids left and right.  Flanking him were Siri and Aayla, while Padmé, Skirata, Ordo, and Rex poured fire into the metallic ranks from the relative cover of the Naboo starship’s ramp.  They were making a rapid, clean sweep of it, despite being vastly outnumbered.  Every second narrowed that numbers gap further, the change in the balance of the fight rapidly snowballing in their favor.

And abruptly, Venge cleaved the last droid in half with his phrik hand, and there was nobody left in the hangar but the eight of them.

He immediately whirled on Terminus, who raised his saber in a defensive pose.  “You _bastard,_ ” Venge snarled at him as he advanced, fists clenched.  “You think you can manipulate me, use me, and _get away with it?_   I’m going to strangle you with your own viscera.”

“Padmé, I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Terminus said, taking what looked like an involuntary step back from Venge.  “I’m not a clone, I’m me!  Venge!  He’s the imposter.”

“Really?” Siri asked.  “We’re doing this?”  As if to punctuate her point, the dreadnought bucked beneath their feet, and through the hangar opening Venge could see multiple _Venator_ cruisers sweeping by, unloading massive broadsides into the _Invisible Hand._

“No,” Padmé replied, coming out from behind her starship’s ramp.  “We’re not.  Everyone, lower your weapons.”

Given that Venge was unarmed, he couldn’t follow the letter of her command, but he did unclench his fists and let his arms hang at his sides.  He stayed alert, knowing that this was the perfect opportunity for Terminus to leap forward and cut him in two, but surprisingly enough, his doppelganger deactivated his silver blade and returned the pommel to his belt.

The instant he did, Padmé shot him in the back.  A stunbolt, full power, rippled into him, blue rings of energy dropping him to the deck.  He twitched once and then was still.

Venge stared at him for a moment, then looked up at Padmé, grinning.  “I knew you’d –”

Then she shot him, too.

* * *

An hour later, Rex found himself in the briefing room aboard the _Chimaera._  

Both Venges – still unconscious thanks to heavy sedation – were restrained, locked in the brig, and under guard.  He wanted to be down there, talking to them, trying to figure out what was going on, but technically speaking, his special assignment from Anakin was complete.  Now he needed to be here, by his commanding officer’s side.

Or, more specifically, to his side and a few steps back, to better place Anakin between himself and the explosive conflict in the center of the room.

The shattered remnants of the _Invisible Hand_ were visible through the panoramic windows of the briefing room.  The view was a fitting backdrop to the new battle being fought between Thrawn and Padmé.

“You spied on me,” Padmé said.

“Which allowed us to arrive here, precisely in time to keep you from being spirited away by the _Invisible Hand_ as Plagueis intended,” Thrawn pointed out.

“You had no intention of letting me find Venge!”

“My intentions were to use him to lead us to Plagueis for a precision strike against the CIS leadership.  I expected that would be easier if you were not involved, due to objections you would doubtless raise about the plan.”

Padmé’s eyes blazed as she leveled an accusatory finger at Thrawn.  “Did it never occur to you that I might know Venge better than you?  That my bringing him back and trying to help him would be the _right thing to do?_ ”

“Moralizing has no place in warfare,” Thrawn replied, arching a blue-black eyebrow.  “You bringing Venge back and rehabilitating him would benefit him, and perhaps you and Captain Rex for reasons I feel none of us need stated aloud.  _My_ using Venge to locate Plagueis and then kill the latter would benefit every living being in the galaxy.  Does the moral superiority of your plan outweigh the practical superiority of mine?”

“We shouldn’t stoop to using the Sith’s tactics to win the war!”

“Venge himself would doubtless advocate such ‘stooping’ if he were present and still on our side.”

“Padmé,” Anakin said.  “Can I offer an opinion?”

The room went completely silent as everyone turned to look at him.  Padmé’s fury was writ large across her face, but she nodded.  “Go ahead.”

Anakin took an audible breath.  “What if it weren’t Venge you’d been chasing?  What if it were Vader?”

Rex wasn’t sure where Anakin was going with this, but Padmé’s expression seemed to indicate she did.  “That’s not the same thing.”

With a shrug, Anakin replied, “Both powerful Dark Side users.  Both Sith, or at least affiliated with the Sith.  Both could potentially be turned to the Light, or at least convinced to help us.  And both could be used by the Lord Admiral to track Plagueis.”

“Venge _was_ on our side before he was brainwashed and violated,” Padmé snapped.  “Vader has never been on our side.”

Anakin crossed his arms over his chest.  “Vader was never given a choice.  The only thing he’s ever known is the Sith.  Sound familiar?  Maybe like someone you could help realize that there’s more to life than devotion to an evil overlord?  So what’s the difference between him and Venge?”

“Better orators than you have asked me leading questions in order to make a point, Vice-Admiral Skywalker,” Padmé said, her voice chilly.  “Please get on with it.”

“The difference,” Rex spoke up, deciding to throw himself on the grenade Anakin had primed, “is that you and I are emotionally involved with Venge.”

Padmé’s gaze was indeed withering; Rex felt parts of himself shrivel up that he hadn’t been aware were physically capable of that action.  “So we’re supposed to just roll over for the Lord Admiral’s cold-blooded plan for our friend because we would be fine if the object of that plan _weren’t_ our friend?  And put aside the flagrant contempt he’s shown for us by not bothering to include us in that plan?”

Rex stiffened as it hit him.  Anakin wasn’t wrong – he had been approaching the problem from a military perspective, in an attempt to bridge the gaps between Thrawn’s and Padmé’s worldviews.  But he wasn’t completely right, either.  He looked at Thrawn.  “Permission to speak freely, Lord Admiral.”

“Granted, Captain,” Thrawn said, apparently not thrown at all by the sudden non sequitur.

“The issue here is that you’re used to commanding soldiers,” Rex said.  “Good soldiers follow orders.  They don’t question it when a commander makes a decision that doesn’t take their feelings or motivations into account.  They just… do as they’re told.  But Ambassador Amidala isn’t a soldier, sir, and she isn’t used to being treated like one.  You treated her like one when you didn’t see fit to include her in your calculations.  She’s not military personnel, sir, but she’s an important part of the Order’s chain of command.  And you didn’t take that into account.”

Thrawn’s glowing red eyes narrowed.  He turned to Padmé.

“I believe the Captain is correct,” he said.  “I have been responding to you as though you were a soldier protesting the actions of a commander.”  He bowed, briefly, at the waist.  “I apologize.”

Padmé just stared at him, eyes wide, for several seconds.  “Really?  I mean – apology accepted, Lord Admiral.  I just… didn’t expect it.”

Thrawn’s lip twitched.  “Admitting one’s errors and correcting them is important for a military officer.  I would have been well within my rights as supreme commander of the Order’s forces to have you tracked and followed without your knowledge if you were a soldier.  But, as the Captain has pointed out, you were not.  I was in the wrong.”

After a long moment of silence, Anakin cleared his throat.  “Okay.  So, if we’re all done with the hugging and the learning, and we’re all on the same side again – what are we going to do about the two Venges in our brig?”

For the first time in what seemed like a very long time, Rex saw Padmé’s lips quirk in a smile.

“I have an idea.”


	10. Glass Cages

Siri stood in a small observation chamber in the detention level, along with Padmé and Skirata.  The room was dimly lit and its only feature was a large, clear window with a small control panel mounted beneath it.  On the other side of the window, the ship was cunningly configured to be able to detach individual detention cells from storage and move them along magnetic rails into position for observation.  Two such cells had been placed there.

Looking at the two seemingly-identical men in their side-by-side rooms, Siri leaned over to Padmé and asked in a low, suggestive voice, “So, when you said you had an _idea_ about what to do with two Venges _…_ ”

Padmé gave the other woman a light smack across the shoulder.  “Not like that, Siri.  I’d tell you to get your mind out of the gutter, but as an elected official I’ve made it my policy not to deliver eviction notices.”

From Siri’s right, Skirata chuckled.  “You need a bacta patch for that burn, _Sir’ika?_ ” he asked.

Siri scowled at him.  “I’m fine, you old _di’kut._ ”  He smiled in approval at her use of the Mandalorian word, which was both heartwarming and annoying, since it took the sting out of her retort.  She looked back at the two Venges.  “I’m assuming they can’t hear us.”

“One-way transparisteel,” Padmé confirmed.  “Unless I press this button, here.  I told them to put the one with all of Venge’s gear in the left cell, and the one who Force-rushed his way unarmed through a hundred droids in the right.  We just need – there he is.”

Padmé’s words were accompanied by the hiss of a door behind them, along with two familiar Force presences.  Siri turned to see Maul and Ahsoka stride in.  “Maul!” she exclaimed, not even bothering to hide her happiness at seeing him again.  “Glad you haven’t died yet.”

He gave her a deadpan look and didn’t dignify her comment with a response, though he did nod in greeting.  “I came here as soon as I got your message,” he said, turning to Padmé.

“When did you send for him?” Skirata asked.

“On our way out of the _Invisible Hand_ ,” Padmé replied.  “The second I realized we had two men who both insist they’re Venge, I knew I wanted our Truthsayer here.”  She smiled at Maul’s little Togruta Padawan.  “And I wanted to see how you were doing, Ahsoka.  I thought this was a good enough excuse.”

Ahsoka fairly beamed at that.  “I’m fine!  We’ve killed a _lot_ of tinnies.  Oh, and there was this crazy bald woman on Dathomir who had two lightsabers and –”

“We have been quite busy in the short time since Venge disappeared,” Maul said, sliding expertly into the half-second gap given him by Ahsoka needing to take a breath.  “Do you think either of them is the original?”

“I do,” Padmé said.  “Judging from what the one on the right told me, he’s Venge, and the one on the left is a clone body implanted with a split personality named Terminus, who was created by Plagueis more than a decade ago, then conditioned to _think_ he’s also Venge.”

“Until such a time as his conditioning expires or is lifted and he betrays us,” Maul murmured.  “But why bother with a clone body?  We know how difficult it is to clone Force-users, even for Plagueis; the Myrmidons are proof of that, judging by their numbers.  Why not simply condition Venge and send him back to us?”

Padmé shook her head.  “Too obvious.  We already know that Plagueis can manipulate people, even Jedi Masters, so we’d be suspicious.  We’d be _careful,_ but suspicious.  I’m guessing that he was keeping Venge alive so he could condition him, too, and then let him escape to blow the whistle on Terminus.  Then, once he was back with us and we were satisfied that we’d seen through the trap –”

“That would be when Venge would turn _again_ ,” Maul finished.  “Devious.”

“How did you figure that out?” Ahsoka asked, her eyes wide with amazement.

With a slight shrug, Padmé said, “Thrawn helped a lot, actually.  He made some decisions based on what he thought – correctly – I was going to do in response to Venge’s… defection.  After we cleared the air, I got to thinking: if Thrawn could predict me like that, Plagueis – who’s older and, as we saw at Corulag, can out-gambit Thrawn – can too.  The rest just kind of fell out from there.”

Skirata spoke up next.  “But we still have that recognition signal.  Between that, and you figuring out what his game probably is, why do we need Maul here?”  He glanced at the intimidating Zabrak and quickly added, “Not that I’m not happy to see you too.”

Maul’s only response to that was a slow, catlike blink.

“One, I want to see if Plagueis’s conditioning _actually_ makes Terminus believe he’s Venge,” Padmé said.  “The more information we have about how his manipulation works, the better.  Two – well, you’ll find out.  Let me have a little drama.”

That prompted a snort from Skirata.  “Alright, _Pad’ika._   Your audience is captive and waiting.  What’ve you got?”

* * *

Padmé motioned Maul forward, then pressed the button to switch the transparisteel from one-sided transparency to total.  Nothing seemed to happen for a moment, but then the Venge on the right stood up from where he’d been sitting, looking through the window at them.  “Padmé!” he said.  “There has been a serious – ah.  Maul.  So that’s how we’re doing this.”

“Are you Venge?” Padmé asked, ruthlessly keeping her voice calm and level.  “The original?”

“Yes,” he said.

Maul nodded silently at her.

“Did you beat Dooku to death and reveal Palpatine’s identity as Sidious, or was that Terminus?”

“I freely admit that Terminus took advantage of my anger and pain to goad me into dispatching Dooku in a horrendous way,” Venge told her.  “So I suppose I would call that fifty-fifty.  But the Sidious incident was entirely him and Plagueis.”

“Truth,” Maul said.

Padmé felt a certain amount of relief, as well as disappointment that the horrific slaughter she’d witnessed had not been wholly Terminus’s fault.  But then, she’d always known Venge was capable of great cruelty.  He had been a Sith, after all.

“Do you know if Plagueis conditioned you to betray us again?” she asked, and held her breath for the answer.

Venge nodded eagerly.  “He did!  His plan was to send Terminus back to you, then let me escape, only to have me turn again afterward.  But I rooted it out.  I crushed it, Padmé!”

Padmé stared at him for a moment, unable to speak.  It wasn’t that she didn’t believe Venge could have done what he was describing.  It was, instead, that she was feeling a wave of intense emotion hitting her.  After the shock of losing him, after the frenzied search and danger, all that stood between her and having him back was a few inches of transparisteel.  And she was realizing what she’d almost lost.

She swallowed, trying to refocus herself.  Now was not the time to be having these revelations and doubts.  She could deal with what she was feeling later.  Right now, she made herself focus on the fact that Maul had just said, “Truth.”

“I’m going to send the signal for your cell to be returned to the detention block,” Padmé told him.  “I’ll have them send you in here.”

Venge nodded eagerly.  “I’ll be right there, Padmé.”

Padmé keyed in the appropriate command on the control panel and gave the orders to the detention guards via intership comm.  She finally let herself relax, just a little.

She felt a comforting hand on her shoulder – Siri.  “I’m glad he’s – well, not innocent, but not a traitor,” she said.

“Me, too,” Skirata said.  “Poor _chakaar_ can’t seem to shake being used by the Sith, or at least having them _try._ ”

“That all ends now,” Padmé murmured.  “We’re turning the tables on them today.”

It was less than a minute before the door hissed open.  Padmé was suddenly swept up in his arms, his grip enveloping her, making her feel small and safe.  She wrapped her own arms around him, feeling the thinness of his frame.  He’d lost weight since she’d last seen him.

“Padmé,” Venge breathed.  “I’m back.”

The urge to kiss him was almost overwhelming, but Padmé had never been one for public displays of affection.  She pulled back just enough to look him in the eye, let him see her smile and the tears she was carefully holding back.

“I missed you,” she said.

“I missed you, too.  In the parts I was conscious for, at any rate.”  He looked past her at Terminus, his features going hard and deadly.  “What are we going to do with him?”

“You’ll like this.” 

Padmé turned and switched Terminus’s cell to full transparency.  Instantly, he came to his feet, pressed a hand against the transparisteel.  “Padmé!”  His gaze focused on Venge, and panic suffused his features.  “Whatever he’s told you, it’s a trick!  This is something Plagueis has set up!”

“You’re the real Venge?” Padmé asked.

“I am!”

“Truth,” Maul confirmed.

“Well,” Padmé said, letting her lips curve in a triumphant smile.  “That’s very interesting.  Do you know what else is interesting?”

And she spoke the roiling Sith recognition signal.

Terminus’s eyes bulged.  His muscles spasmed, his head arched back; for a moment, he looked like a bent bow, drawn almost to the breaking point.

Then he collapsed back onto the bench seat of the cell.  He looked up again a moment later, and there was no mistaking it: he was a different man.  There was a hollowness to his eyes.  The way his lips subtly twisted bespoke a loathing unlike anything Padmé had ever seen from Venge.

“Well,” he said.  “It looks like the scheme didn’t work.”

“That it didn’t,” Padmé replied.  “You’re in a cell, Venge is here and he’s broken the _new_ conditioning Plagueis tried to put on him, and all I have to do is press this button and you’ll automatically be ejected into space.”

Behind her, Padmé heard Ahsoka stir – probably to speak up, helpfully in her mind, about how that button actually just lowered the lighting.  Before she could, however, Maul quietly cleared his throat, and the Padawan subsided.

Terminus seemed to have caught the exchange, but he didn’t acknowledge it.  “I’m not afraid of death or pain, you realize.  Lord Plagueis made me quite carefully.  The only thing interrogating or torturing me will accomplish is wasting your time.”

“Funny,” Skirata chuckled.  “Sounds like what someone afraid of being tortured would say.”

The Sith gave a marginal shrug, the movement of one shoulder.  “Believe that if you want.  My function was to monitor Venge, and return him to the Sith if he ever strayed.  When I brought him back, Lord Plagueis charged me with a new purpose: return to you, posing as Venge – conditioned to think I _was_ him – and, when the time was right, lower Kamino’s shields.”

“Or, more likely, die in the fight when the real Venge showed up and exposed you,” Padmé pointed out.

“More likely,” Terminus acknowledged.

Padmé made a show of thinking hard about what she had already decided to say.  “It seems to me, Terminus, that Plagueis considered you expendable.”

“He doubtless did.”

“You observed Venge for more than ten years.  You have his memories – his emotions, what drove his decisions.”

“I do.”

“So do you remember what it was like for Venge when he decided to leave the Sith?”

Terminus gave her a thin, bitter smile.  “I see what you’re attempting to do, Ambassador, but it won’t work.  Lord Plagueis _did_ create me to be utterly loyal to him, after all.”

“Venge wasn’t created in the same way, but Palpatine still raised him to be loyal.  Look how that turned out.”

“It is not the same.”

“It is!  Plagueis gave you the capacity for choice, Terminus.  He had to in order to make his scheme work.  If you were just an unthinking machine, only capable of following orders, you’d never be able to pass the test of Maul’s truthsense.  You wouldn’t _believe_ what you were saying was the truth, you would just be saying what you had been ordered to.  It wouldn’t register as a lie, but Maul would have been able to tell the difference.”

Maul actually grinned.  “Truth.  In every sense.”

“So, Terminus,” Padmé said.  “You have a choice, possibly the first real choice in your life.  Stay loyal to Plagueis, and see how long you can last in vacuum.  Or… you can cut a deal with us.”

Terminus raised an eyebrow.  “There’s no way you would actually consider letting me live.  Or, even if you would, _he_ wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Venge asked.  “I can’t hate you.  Not truly.  You manipulated me, used me, humiliated me – but that was just what you had been created to do.  Now, you have a chance to become more than you are.  You have a chance to be – not just something created from me, but something _more than me._ ”

Terminus looked hard at him, then back at Padmé.

“I need time to consider what you’ve said.”

“You have a few days,” Padmé told him.  “That’s how long it’ll take us to get back to Kamino.  Where we’re going to try to contain some of the damage you’ve caused.”

She pressed a button, and the machinery of the ship whirred to life, carrying Terminus away to the solitude of the detention block.


	11. Hyperspace Epiphanies

The viewports of Padmé’s cabin glowed with the soft blue of hyperspace travel.  She could have blanked them with a simple command, of course, but it made for nice mood lighting.

Enjoying the simple feeling of the sheets against her skin in the post-coital space, Padmé idly ran a finger along the line of Venge’s jaw.  “You need to grow your beard back.  I was fond of it.”

Venge chuckled.  “Pardon me for having my face seared off by near-molten metal.”

“We’ll have to thank Plagueis for fixing that,” Padmé mused.  “Right before we lock him in a cell forever, of course.”

She felt tension arc through Venge’s muscles before he controlled the reaction to her comment.  “Padmé, he’s too dangerous to be left alive.”  The conviction in his voice was absolute, terrifying in its intensity.  “We’re going to have to kill him.  You know that, right?”

Her heart caught in her throat for a moment, but she swallowed, dispelling the feeling.  “I wish I did.  My gut tells me that he should be tried, publically, and found guilty.  Not killed in an ambush or blown up along with his ship, like Thrawn tried to do today.  But what jury could be trusted to try his case fairly?  Being in the same room with him is taking your life into your hands.”  She shrugged, her left shoulder rubbing against his right.  “I wish it were different.”

“I know you do, but he’s the one who pursued this power,” Venge told her.  “This entire situation, this war, is his fault.  And if we don’t beat him, he’ll become an immortal tyrant who distorts the very personalities of his subjects.”

Padmé felt a sigh threaten and didn’t resist it.  The small breath that escaped her left her feeling strangely light, like her last reservations and fears had flowed out with it.  If Venge was committed, then she had to be too.

“I realized, when I heard you tell me that you really were free of the Sith, that I love you,” she said.

He didn’t respond for a long moment, though the leaping tension had returned.  “I thought we had agreed otherwise,” he began, his tone careful.

“We had,” she replied.  “But I think that was a careful lie I was telling both of us.  You were the man who killed one of my loyal officers, and lied to me, and for the longest time represented an existential threat to galactic peace.  I could _use_ you, find some solace with you, but I couldn’t love you.  I couldn’t make myself vulnerable to you and allow myself to be hurt again.”

There was a definite hint of anger in his voice now, though he kept his expression calm.  “Well, it’s not as though I was ever entirely honest with you, either.  Until the truth was forced out, at least.”

Padmé sat up, letting the blanket slip down to her waist.  “Don’t do that,” she told him, projecting sternness.  “Don’t imply that our wrongs cancel out.  They don’t.  You _were_ unfair to me, but I was unfair to you, too.  And I wanted to say that I’m sorry for it.”

Venge looked up at her, the dim light of hyperspace and his dilated pupils giving his eyes a huge, liquid aspect.  “Do you need me to say that I forgive you?  Because I think you know I do.  Even if I didn’t owe you my life for coming to rescue me.”

“I don’t need to hear it, no,” Padmé said.  “What I need to hear right now is that you love me too.  Or that if you don’t, you think you could come to.  Because otherwise what we have, what we’re doing, isn’t equal.  It won’t end well, and we need to bring it to a close.”

Now Venge sat up too, looking deadly serious.  “You might have brought this up before we fell into bed.”

“I didn’t want to,” she admitted.  “I missed you.  I needed this closeness, this space, to push me to a point where I could be brave enough to tell you.”

He raised an eyebrow.  “That’s not entirely ethical, is it?”

The notion of a former Sith discussing sexual ethics was amusing, in a macabre way; the fact that he was discussing them naked in bed with her pushed it into the realm of the absurd.  Padmé resisted the urge to laugh, knowing that it would be the wrong thing to do.  “No, it wasn’t.  I’ll apologize for that too, if you want.”

“No, I don’t want you to.”  For the first time since they’d begun this conversation, Venge smiled.  “Is it a cowardly move if I tell you that I honestly don’t know if I love you?  I’ve never _felt_ love.  I want you, and I need you, and I want to be worthy of you – but do these things boil down to love?  If I love you, then why do I still want to have my time with Rex, and why am I so concerned about how he kind of just waved us off and said he wanted us to have our space?  Isn’t love possessive, or exclusive?”

“Not necessarily.”  Padmé laid a comforting hand on his knee.  “Some people love a single person, to the exclusion of everyone else, and some don’t.  The Naboo have what I’m told is a fairly open view about it, given how political marriage is still a practice among noble houses.  You just might not be one of the people who feels it about one person exclusively.  And that’s fine, Venge.  It really is.” 

She hesitated, but now was not the time for half measures.  “Anakin and I had a moment, after you had disappeared.  He came to check on me, and spent the night helping me through a drunken depression, and at the end of it all I thought, ‘I could see this going somewhere.’  But that doesn’t change my feelings for you in the slightest.”

He nodded, his expression indicating reasoned acceptance.  “That’s fair.  I just – I wish there was some binary I could use.  If this, then love.  If not, then not.”

Padmé thought about it for a moment, understanding that simple desire, and arrived at a possible answer.  “Easy enough.  If you had the chance to jump in front of a blaster bolt for me, would you do it?”

With a frown, Venge asked, “Isn’t that trite?  Obviously I want to say yes, but I can’t know if that’s an honest response.”

“But I do.”  Padmé smiled at him.  “Above Geonosis, I made you promise never to let the Sith use me as leverage against you.  It couldn’t have been more than an hour before you went back on that promise and seriously considered trading your life to Plagueis in exchange for mine.  You’ve already jumped in front of that blaster bolt, Venge.”

He actually blushed, which was a delightful reaction to see.  “If I remember correctly, it wasn’t just for your life.  There were others involved.”

“Yes, but if I hadn’t been there, would you have made that same deal?”

Venge grimaced.  “My gut instinct is to say ‘no.’  Not very flattering.”

“No,” she agreed.  “But you weren’t raised, molded, to be the kind of person whose gut says ‘yes.’  Is that your fault?”

“Also no.”  Venge hesitantly returned her smile.  “So… all this time.  It’s been love?”

“It can be if you agree with me that it is.”

He drew her into the circle of his arms.  “I don’t want any more secrets,” he said.  “From you, or myself.  Do I… have to say the words?”

She nudged him in the gut with her elbow, careful to avoid the warp in his ribs.  “I was brave enough to.”

“Fine.”  He took a deep breath, looked into her eyes, and said, “I love you, too.”

Padmé could feel what it had taken for him to be able to admit it.  She opened her mouth to tell him thank you, to try to express some part of how complete this made her feel, but he spoke again before she could.  “And since I love you, I have to be honest with you.  I can’t be here with you, not fully, because I’m worried about Rex.”

It was tempting to let herself feel hurt, but he was doing the right and proper thing.  She could, too.  Padmé nodded.  “You don’t think he was sincere when he said he wanted us to have our space?”

“That, or he was, but for the wrong reasons.”  Venge gestured toward the door with a movement of his head.  “I’m going to go see him.  Do you want to come with?”

“I don’t want him to feel like he’s being ganged up on.”

“I’m fairly certain he won’t.”  Venge paused, then added, “I think I’d like you there.  For support.”

Padmé felt her smile return.  The last barrier between them was gone.  She didn’t know what the future held – the Order could fall apart tomorrow, given how bad things seemed right now – but whatever happened, she wouldn’t be facing it alone.

“Let’s get presentable and we’ll go,” she told him, swinging her legs out of the bed.  “We’re all in this together, after all.”

“Yes,” he agreed.  “Yes, we are.”

* * *

The look on Rex’s face when he opened the door to find the two of them waiting outside told Venge everything he needed to know.  The other man hadn’t expected to see either of them for the rest of the night, and he was genuinely surprised.

“Venge,” he said with a smile.  “Padmé.  I –”

“Didn’t expect to see us, I know,” Venge said.  “May we come in?”

“Of course.”  Rex stepped aside to let them into the temporary quarters he’d been given aboard the _Manticore._   They were small, but as befitted a Captain, they were for a single occupant – one bed, one table with two chairs.  Venge moved to sit on the bed in order to avoid the inevitable polite disagreement over who would stand.

The glow-lamp next to the bed was lit, and a datapad sat on its base.  Venge glanced at it as he sat, saw that Rex had been reading about Mandalorian history.  “I realized,” he said as Rex and Padmé sat, “that I said thank you, and that I was happy to see you again.  But that wasn’t enough, and it wasn’t right of us to leave you alone on a night like this.”

Rex gave him a shrug that was just a little too easy.  “I told you to, sir.  We’ve already established that I’m not much for – group activities, let’s say – and you two have been together longer.  It seemed the simplest way to handle it.”

Padmé leaned forward in her seat and extended a hand to him.  “I appreciate that, Rex, but we shouldn’t have been so quick to take you at your word.  We’re new at this, and – well, we realized it wasn’t fair to you.”

“It would have been better if we’d realized that earlier,” Venge added in dryly.  “But it took us a while, so.  Here we are.”

Now Rex looked uncomfortable.  “ _I_ appreciate _that_ , Ambas – ah, Padmé.  But what are we going to do, sit around and play cards?  Venge just got out of prison, so to speak.  And not to get too personal, but I saw the look on your face when he said he was free and clear of Plagueis’s brain-twisting.  You needed that time with him.”

“Maybe we feel like playing cards,” Venge said before Padmé could speak.  “I’ll admit that the time we had got us to a fairly intense emotional revelation, but I daresay it was at the expense of your feelings.  If we’re going to make this situation work, that’s not going to be acceptable.”

Rex opened his mouth, then clicked it shut again.  Venge felt the turmoil emanating from him in the Force: shock, delight, relief, tinged with – yes, definitely an edge of cooling anger.

“When you came into the room,” Rex admitted, “and went straight to her, I – well, I’m not one for public displays of affection, so even if you _had_ come to me instead, I doubt I’d have wanted to make a show of it.  But I _was_ jealous.  And I felt it would be easier to let it run its course in private.”

Venge, letting his instincts guide him, stood up and moved to lay a hand on Rex’s shoulder.  “I’m sorry about that.”

Rex laid his own hand atop Venge’s, gave a gentle squeeze.  “Thank you.”

There was a moment of contented silence.  Then Padmé twitched as her commlink began to buzz.

“It’s Anakin,” a familiar voice came from it when she thumbed the device on.  “Hope I’m not waking you up.”

“No, it’s fine,” Padmé told him.  “Venge and Rex are here too.  What’s going on?”

“Our man says he wants to make a deal,” Anakin replied, and there was no mistaking the grim satisfaction in his voice.  “I don’t know what you said to him, Padmé, but it worked.”

“What’s he want, and what’s he offering?” Venge asked.

“He wants his freedom.  We let him go, no strings attached, and don’t follow him.  In exchange…”

“Yes?” Padmé asked, knowing that Anakin was being dramatic and not begrudging it.

“He gives us the identity of the traitor in the Hapan court,” Anakin said.  “And information on the Sith’s next big project.  One that Plagueis is hoping to use to bring down the Order.

“It’s called Project Myrkr.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for Terminus, thank you for reading! The next story in the Venge series, "Calamities II: Myrkr," will begin next week. I hope to see you there!


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